Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn YouTube
    Trending
    • Rajiv Kulkarni Talks about the Malware Analysis Pipeline
    • IDS Alliance Raises Awareness of IAM Fundamentals with the ‘CISO Chronicles’
    • Building Digital Accessibility: AI Requires Human Oversight to Cut Down on Algorithmic Biases
    • BlackBerry Ivy: Enabling a New Age of Electric Secure Autonomous Vehicles
    • Security Automation Cuts Down Expenses and Saves Time for IT Teams
    • IBM Think 2022 – Embracing the Present, Preparing for the Future
    • A Game of Numbers: The Correlation Between Technology and Sports Betting
    • Software-based Enterprise Solutions for Navigating the “Too Much Information” Age
    TechSpective
    • RSS
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • LinkedIn
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Technology
      Featured
      March 1, 20216

      Could Home Study Be Better for Education? Using Technology to Craft a Better Tomorrow

      Recent
      May 20, 2022

      Building Digital Accessibility: AI Requires Human Oversight to Cut Down on Algorithmic Biases

      May 20, 2022

      BlackBerry Ivy: Enabling a New Age of Electric Secure Autonomous Vehicles

      May 15, 2022

      A Look At The Last Generation Of Internal Combustion Engines

    • Reviews
      Featured
      March 4, 20211

      Dell’s UltraSharp 40 – Improving Work and Workplaces with Monitor Innovations

      Recent
      April 7, 2022

      Dell’s Latitude 5430 Rugged – Redefining the Extremes of Mobile Computing

      October 12, 2021

      Innovating Home Video Conferencing: Dell’s New 27 Video Conferencing Monitor – S2722DZ

      September 22, 2021

      Review: Intrusion Shield

    • Podcasts
    • Security
      Featured
      March 7, 20212

      Pandemic Unmasks Vulnerability to Automated Bot Attacks

      Recent
      May 25, 2022

      Rajiv Kulkarni Talks about the Malware Analysis Pipeline

      May 23, 2022

      IDS Alliance Raises Awareness of IAM Fundamentals with the ‘CISO Chronicles’

      May 14, 2022

      Ransomware is Indiscriminatory – Prepare for Everything to Fail

    • Microsoft
      Featured
      September 12, 20201

      The Microsoft Surface Duo: The Communications Device for Those That Think Different

      Recent
      April 8, 2022

      AI and Why Windows 12 Could Be a Far Bigger Advance than Windows 95 Was

      October 11, 2021

      The Surface Laptop Studio: Building a Windows 11 Targeted Laptop

      August 28, 2021

      Why Microsoft’s Hardware Baseline for Windows 11 Is Important

    • News & Analysis
      Featured
      March 6, 20212

      Fixing The World One Person At A Time: Cisco Networking Academy

      Recent
      May 25, 2022

      Rajiv Kulkarni Talks about the Malware Analysis Pipeline

      May 20, 2022

      BlackBerry Ivy: Enabling a New Age of Electric Secure Autonomous Vehicles

      May 20, 2022

      IBM Think 2022 – Embracing the Present, Preparing for the Future

    • Business
      Featured
      March 6, 20212

      Fixing The World One Person At A Time: Cisco Networking Academy

      Recent
      May 20, 2022

      Building Digital Accessibility: AI Requires Human Oversight to Cut Down on Algorithmic Biases

      May 20, 2022

      Security Automation Cuts Down Expenses and Saves Time for IT Teams

      May 18, 2022

      Software-based Enterprise Solutions for Navigating the “Too Much Information” Age

    TechSpective
    You are at:Home»Mobile»Virtual Assistant»Alexa»How Apple HomePod Avoided Making the Mistakes of Microsoft Zune
    Apple HomePod
    Image credit Apple

    How Apple HomePod Avoided Making the Mistakes of Microsoft Zune

    1
    By Rob Enderle on December 2, 2017 Alexa, Amazon, Apple, Household, Internet of Things, Siri, Speakers, Virtual Assistant

    If I were to coin one word for this decade it would be “ironic”. The most recent example is the Apple HomePod. Because it seems to approach Amazon’s dominant Echo product in much the same way the Microsoft (disclosure Microsoft is a client of the author) Zune went after the iPod. The only significant difference is that Apple has pulled its release prior to it being embarrassed in market recently, but the same elements apply. Given Apple should know intimately just what the Zune mistakes were, it is shocking that they would try to bring to market their own version.

    Let’s revisit Zune and then tie the HomePod mistake back to it.

    Recalling The iPod

    The iPod was a fascinating product that conventional wisdom would have concluded would have been a failure. Before it came out, the MP3 market was badly fragmented by hard to use MP3 players costing under $200 that were flash memory based and had very little capacity. The iPod was released as a no-compromise product costing over $400 that was easy to use, and—for the time—had more capacity than most needed. It did one thing well, and it did it very well—it managed and played music. It became a showcase of how to release a product, because it was wrapped with a significant marketing budget, it was tightly focused on that one skill, and compared to everything else it was relatively uncompromised.

    It did have exposures in terms of cost, an inability to do anything else but play music, and it didn’t work well (initially) with Windows—the then dominant operating system. To compete and displace this product someone would need to come up with something better, that could migrate much of the content automatically to the new platform and did at least one compelling thing that the iPod did not.

    Recalling Zune

    I’ll never forget the first time I saw the brown (the iconic launch color) of the Zune. On paper it had been a brilliant product and the support staff behind it had done a fantastic job of putting together an ecosystem and getting the recording companies on board. I’d been told the plan was to have a way to migrate the play lists off the iPod and that there had been a huge effort to design something cool that would pull the rug out from under Apple.

    On paper this product would do video and share music, two things the iPod could not do (play video and share music), it was generally less expensive than the iPod, and it was far more robust than the iPod. On paper, the Zune was literally an iPod killer. But what was “on paper” apparently never got into the product.

    When Microsoft finally showed me the product I thought they were kidding. It was butt ugly. They were afraid of being sued by Apple, so they hadn’t enabled the migration capability. Worse, one of the key features was the ability to share songs legally but that only worked between two Zunes. As for the other killer feature—playing video—they had no video content. They never pushed that the product was more robust, and it was obvious it was ugly.

    So, to net this out, Microsoft knew what they needed to do to beat the iPod, and even built about 90 percent of the solution, but it was clear before they ever actually shipped it, it would fail. Yet they shipped it anyway…and it failed.

    Amazon Echo

    The Echo—much like the iPod was—is dominant in the digital assistant space. It is a bit more mature than the iPod was, but it generally does just a few things well. It answers questions and plays music well. Unlike the iPod, it entered the market without any real competition as the first standalone digital assistant at scale. It had some vulnerabilities (some of which have been corrected): It didn’t have party mode (you couldn’t play the same song on every Echo), the sound quality wasn’t at premium level, it’s promised home automation capability was very limited, it didn’t support iTunes, and it didn’t initially support video. However, unlike Apple and the iPod, Amazon aggressively improved the product and now you can play the same song in every room, and Amazon shipped the Echo Show which supports video.

    HomePod

    Apple announced their HomePod to address the sound quality issue with the Echo and the lack of iTunes support—unfortunately their initial price was twice what the Echo was. They did address both the sound quality issue with better speakers and they supported iTunes out of the box, but there was no migration path from the Echo to the HomePod for either apps or content. Meanwhile, Amazon improved their speakers and—as noted—brought out video products after the HomePod was announced, and significantly improved their home automation support.

    Apple needed a significantly better product than the Echo to be successful. While they announced a marginally better product, by the time it was to be released Amazon had improved their offering so that Apple’s was no longer competitive. So, Apple killed the release of the product, which is what Microsoft should have done with the Zune.

    Wrapping Up

    Both Microsoft with Apple and Apple with Amazon wanted to bring out products that could displace the then-dominant iPod and now-dominant Echo. Both firms after much soul searching seemed to know what was needed. Microsoft under-executed with the Zune and Amazon out-executed Apple, resulting in both the Zune and the HomePod becoming obvious failures. However, unlike Microsoft who went ahead and released their Zune, Apple avoided the cost and embarrassment of a failure and pulled the product. So, while Apple has yet to showcase they can again have the kind of success against decent entrenched products like they did with the iPhone, at least they partially learned from Microsoft’s mistake and didn’t ship a product that couldn’t compete.

    This not only showcases it is better to pull a product than allow it to publicly fail, but that the best strategy to defend—the one that Amazon used—is to update the product aggressively so a competitor like Apple can’t keep up. Amazon effectively out-executed Apple with a better Echo defense than Apple fielded with the iPod, and Apple out-executed Microsoft both with their initial product and their decision to pull the plug. Ironically even though Apple did a far better job than Microsoft did, Amazon’s own execution rendered it moot. So, while the HomePod is effectively Apple’s Zune, unlike the Zune we are likely to forget it ever existed while the Zune created a drag on Microsoft for years.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Previous ArticleA Recipe for Baking Security into Every Piece of Your Infrastructure as Threats Rise
    Next Article Can Bitcoin Be Hacked?
    Rob Enderle
    • Website

    As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, Rob provides regional and global companies with guidance in how to create credible dialogue with the market, target customer needs, create new business opportunities, anticipate technology changes, select vendors and products, and practice zero dollar marketing. For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, ROLM, and Siemens.

    Related Posts

    Apple vs. Dell: Choosing Which Company to Work For

    Benefits of GPS Tracking and Who it’s for

    Money Management Apps for Personal and Business Use

    Comments are closed.

    Site Sponsors
    Intel
    DevOps.com
    Adobe
    PopSpective
    • Technology
    • Popular
    • Top Reviews
    May 20, 2022

    Building Digital Accessibility: AI Requires Human Oversight to Cut Down on Algorithmic Biases

    May 20, 2022

    BlackBerry Ivy: Enabling a New Age of Electric Secure Autonomous Vehicles

    May 15, 2022

    A Look At The Last Generation Of Internal Combustion Engines

    9.0
    July 14, 2016

    Review: Lenovo Yoga 900S

    9.5
    March 2, 2015

    Review: Asus Zenbook UX305 ultrabook

    8.0
    February 9, 2015

    Review: Burg 12 smartwatch

    9.7
    November 16, 2018

    Review: BlackVue DR900S-2CH Vehicle Dash Cam

    9.5
    September 2, 2015

    Review: Microsoft Band

    May 27, 2014

    Protect your family photos with ScanMyPhotos

    Adobe
    Popular Posts
    9.0
    July 14, 2016

    Review: Lenovo Yoga 900S

    9.5
    March 2, 2015

    Review: Asus Zenbook UX305 ultrabook

    8.0
    February 9, 2015

    Review: Burg 12 smartwatch

    Coffee and Politics
    Coffee and Politics
    Coffee and Politics
    • RSS
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • LinkedIn
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    About

    TechSpective covers technology trends and breaking news in a meaningful way that brings value to the story, and provides you with information that is relevant to you. We offer in-depth reporting and long-form feature stories, as well as breaking news coverage, product reviews, and community content in plain English terms, and with a unique perspective on technology.

    Adobe

    © 2020 Xpective, Inc.

    • About
    • Privacy
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Contact
    © 2021 Xpective, Inc.
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Contact

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.