MICROSOFT TO KILL OFF ZUNE BRAND

Microsoft’s Zune brand has been much maligned over the past half-decade or so, and it’s a shame, because while it never caught the public’s imagination like the iPod did… it’s still one of the best PMPs on the market, boasting features like song-sharing that Apple still hasn’t managed to catch up to.

Over the years, though, the Zune brand has become a bit of a joke… mostly because it’s the first concrete example of Apple leading the way (with the iPod) and Microsoft, for all of its billions, being incapable of catching up.

Now, according to Paul Thurrot, Microsoft is looking to kill the Zune branding once and for all, moving existing Zune services into the Windows Live and Windows Phone 7 ecosystems, among others.

My sources tell me that the Zune brand is on the way out and that all Zune products and services will be moved into other businesses, including Windows Live. Zune will essentially cease to exist under this plan.

The Zune brand is synonymous with the 2006 PMP wars, but Microsoft lost those, and Apple won. No one cares about PMPs anymore, unless they are baked into their smartphones, and that’s the new battlefront for Microsoft: they need to beat the iPhone now, not the iPod.

The Zune line, excellent as it was, is a relic. Future Windows-based PMPs will use Windows Phone 7, not Zune technology. Microsoft may have spent a lot on the brand, but they never went anywhere with it.