MICROSOFT KILLS ZUNE HARDWARE...AGAIN!

Last week, Microsoft put up a support page announcing that it would no longer build or sell Zune hardware, choosing to instead focus on Zune software for Windows Phone and other platforms. ”We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players,” the company said in a statement on the Zune website. Shortly after the page went live, Microsoft said it was a mistake and pulled the note. Now, the page is live again and Zune devices are dead again, presumably for the last time.

MICROSOFT DROPPING ZUNE MUSIC PASS TO $10 PER MONTH

Microsoft will lower its Zune Music Pass from $14.99 per month to $9.99 per month beginning on October 3rd alongside the service’s launch in Canada. The service will now be priced in line with Spotify and similar services. Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace is home to 14 million songs and a Zune Music Pass subscription provides unlimited streaming access to the music. Unlike other services, Zune Music Pass allows subscribers to keep 10 songs per month. Microsoft’s move is no doubt an effort to attract customers who might otherwise but attempted to join a number of competing music subscription options including Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody and even Apple’s upcoming iCloud service. Zune Music Pass subscribers can access their playlists and library from any Windows Phone, a PC or from an Xbox 360 console.

MICROSOFT SHUTS DOWN ZUNE ORIGINALS

Hard to believe that Microsoft's been offering consumers the ability to customize their Zune purchases for the better part of four years now. Without any advanced notice Microsoft has apparently decided to shutter the Zune Originals storefront. As of this weekend, no new orders for highly personalized Zunes are being taken.

So, you're looking at two tidbits of import: if you placed your Originals order at 5PM PT on July 1st, you likely have quite the coveted device headed your way, and more importantly this is further evidence Microsoft is making WP7 into the Zune.

RUMOR: MICROSOFT TO LAUNCH OWN TABLET NEXT YEAR

According to a report on Wednesday from DigiTimes, Microsoft is hard at work on a tablet. The Redmond-based software company is said to be cooperating with Texas Instruments and multiple Taiwan-based manufacturers in an attempt to push a Microsoft-branded Windows 8 tablet out to market by the end of 2012.

Outside of the Xbox gaming console, Microsoft has not had much luck with consumer hardware in recent years. The company’s line of Zune media players were never widely adopted and its KIN line of messaging phones were cancelled shortly after their release before later returning to Verizon shelves with barely any fanfare. DigiTimes’ sources suggest those failures won’t stop the company from trying, however, and the buzzing tablet space is an obvious next point of attack.

MICROSOFT KILLS ZUNE HARDWARE; FOCUSING ON SOFTWARE

Microsoft has apparently killed of the hardware side of Zune. According to Bloomberg, a "person familiar with the decision" has confirmed that Microsoft won't be producing any new Zune media players, and that the company will instead focus solely on the Zune software that already has a foothold on the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone devices (it's not clear if the name will stick around). Microsoft will apparently continue to sell its existing Zunes as long as it has stock of them.

MICROSOFT WORKING ON NEW CLOUD BASED MUSIC/VIDEO SERVICE

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley is reporting Microsoft is staffing up for a cloud-based multimedia project (by a group known as "Ventura Media Services") directed at PCs, TVs and mobile devices. "The team is a tight group of music and video lovers that create services and experiences revolving around music/video discovery and consumption," read a series of job postings that date back at least as far as July of 2010, calling for software developers in Beijing and Redmond who are familiar with the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

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.