Microsoft plans Zune boosting marketing blitz

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 3 Apr 2007 at 09:35

Microsoft is planning a new marketing blitz for its Zune portable media player ahead of the expected launch of new colours and new models later this year.

The new advertising campaign will focus on features that differentiate the Zune from competitors, most notably Apple's iPod, such as screen size (Zune's is bigger than iPods, though it has the same resolution) and the ability to customise the background of the 'home' screen,

'We have a second wave of marketing and advertising coming out next month,' said Jason Reindorp, Microsoft's marketing director for Zune, in order to boost falling sales. 'We had spiked over the holiday period but naturally tapered out.'

He declined to say how much money the company would be committing to the campaign, though it will not be as much as it spent at the time of the product's launch in November of last year.

Ahead of the release of new models, a new pink version will be released in May followed by another 'vibrant colour' some weeks later. There is also talk of the brown model being dropped, both because it has been the object of much of the criticism targeted at the device but also because the weight of that criticism has lead potential buyers to believe that brown is the only available colour. Currently Zune is also available in white and black.

The first new model is expected to be a flash memory-based player to compete with Apple's iPod nano. So far the hard-drive Zunes have failed to make any inroads into Apple's dominance of that sector of the market, so a flash player would seem to be essential if Microsoft is to achieve its stated aim of overtaking Apple's overwhelming market lead. Certainly Reindorp seems to think so.

'They are certainly popular amongst consumers - and therefore, in the industry right now - because of the cost, capacity and size benefits they bring with them, so yes, we are indeed considering if they might complement the Zune device family,' he said.

He also suggested that Microsoft may follow Apple's lead and add support for movies and games, which would fit with its strategy of integrating Zune with Windows Media Center and the Xbox games console.

There is as yet still no word on when, or if, Microsoft will release the Zune outside the US, where its reception has yet to justify the company's claim that it would sell one million units by the end of the first half of 2007. Microsoft has hinted that it will launch in Europe before the end of this year, though it told PC Pro that it will not arrive in the UK until 2008.