Zune wants Europe, does Europe want Zune?

From a European’s perspective, the announced launch of Zune for the end of 2007 is apparently not an event to make you anxiously shiver or rejoice.



A recent announcement made by Jason Reindorp, marketing director for Zune at Microsoft, indicates that the Redmond behemoth plans to introduce its… MP3 player (I would have said iPod-killer but that’s not the case) in Europe by the end of this year.



Reindorp also said that the Zune managed to grab since its launch about 10.2 percent market share in the U.S. in the 30 gigabyte MP3 player category. That seems pretty impressive considering the short period (although I do advise you to take Reindorp’s allegations with a grain of salt) and is in accordance with the company’s forecast for the first half of 2007: 1 million Zune owners by June. Alexa.com also reports that Zune.net, the official site where you can find out about Zune and buy songs or download short videos, has made it to the 5,711th place, which indicates that it has between 50,000 and 100,000 visitors per day, but is now way below the peak registered in November (and apparently dropping).



Reindorp, quoted by Reuters, said at the annual music industry Midem Net conference in France “"You couldn't get a more entrenched competitor. But we feel really good about the first steps that we've taken."



"The industry moves in this sort of Christmas to Christmas cycle. So you can expect that there will be more devices, more features in the market at that point," he said.



"Our next round of introductions will probably be in time for the holiday of this year."



"We're not simply trying to play catch up with Apple," he said. "We are very realistic, we have what is essentially a three-year plan to firmly and solidly get on the radar.”



Well, from hopes to reality is a long way. At least for Zune.



I have unofficially made an ad-hoc poll among my friends on IM clients, all of them being involved in the tech or the news industry here in Europe, and the results are disappointing for Microsoft: Zune apparently doesn’t exist in the EU.



I asked them first whether they know what Zune is. Friends from France, Sweden or Italy have not even heard of this name, and if they did (and associated it by contrast with the iPod, after viewing some photos) they firmly declared that they’ll stick to the iPod. They were on the other side attracted by the wireless sharing feature of the Zune (after I mentioned this to them), but were disappointed by the fact that only around 58% of the songs were actually transferable from one gadget to another (let’s hope that rate will improve).



Concerning Zune’s interoperability with Windows Vista or Xbox or even SoapBox (Microsoft’s new video service which is in Beta - I told them about it because I have a beta-tester account), they didn’t seem to be impressed, all of them saying that they prefer to wait and see how Vista or SoapBox behave on the market before taking a decision.



The interoperability between Zune and Xbox 360 has been made available in advance. In October, MS released a software update for its famous gaming console, through the Xbox Live Marketplace service, explaining that the update will let the Xbox 360 stream music, pictures and video from a Zune device, and from the Zune software on a Windows PC. The Xbox 360 will also stream content from the new Windows Media Player 11 PC software.



I repeat: this is not an official point of view and might not reflect real life situations. But in the next days I will certainly include a poll on the site where users from all over the world (but especially Europeans) will be able to express their thoughts about Zune, so… stay Zuned.