That summarizes the challenge Zune faces from Apple — and Microsoft’s determination (at least for now) to meet it.
It’s hard enough trying to make a product that is more attractive, innovative, easy to use and cool than Apple does. But now many iPods are replacements by people who already have substantial music collections in iTunes. For those people, the choice is between buying an iPod that will simply work with all their music or investing the time and effort to try to convert everything into Zune’s formats.
No wonder that after two years in the music player business, Zune only has a 2 percent market share.
When the Microsoft delegation arrived last year to unveil the second generation of players, Chris Stephenson, Zune’s marketing head, said the company’s low market share in its first year was because it had only offered a hard-drive model at the high end of the market. With the addition of less expensive flash players, starting at $149. Mr. Stephenson said the company hoped to vault to No. 2 in the market, leaping past SanDisk.
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