I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease - John Donne
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Microsoft will not produce a Zune phone
SOFTWARE giant Microsoft says it does not want to copy Apple and produce a Zune smartphone to rival the Iphone.
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, said Vole was not a copycat and would not make phones.
He said that outfit had enough hardware and telco partners using its Windows Mobile operating system. This makes it a lot more cash than trying to flog a Vole-branded product.
Bach added that different people want different types of phones and if they were all using Windows Mobile then Vole was quids in without having to get off its backside and peddle a single type of phone.
For example, Samsung introduced an Iphone competitor that runs on Windows Mobile. Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank.
Bach expects to sell 20 million Windows Mobile licenses in the current fiscal year. µ
L'Inq
Information
Week
Tags: Microsoft
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i won't take anything they say at face value. funny someone would say they are not copy cats. sounds like the pot calling the kettle to come out for some fingering.
... the internet is just a passing fad - oh, crap, wait - no, we're completely internet ready. Really. Of course we are. Sure. Secure? Of course - Micr0$ucks LoseDoze is the most secure O/S available. Yeah. Right.

Jim
so why did they buy Danger then...
I think they know that it would be very hard for them to compete against Apple in this area, not only that, but they would be competing against everyone else that has a SmartPhone using their OS. They'd also have to outsource someone to create it who knew what they were doing, which would ultimately be a company like samsung.

It wouldn't be a wise investment, IMHO. The Zune has done impressively well, compared to what most people thought on it's release. With that said, the politics of creating a phone and services are a bit too risky.
How, exactly, does their target of flogging 20 million O/S licences this year (for a product so piss poor that the manufacturers all have to re-design the UI) for a couple of dollars each make it more money than their fruity competitor selling 12 million $400 phones on a 40+% margin plus 30% of all application sales and god knows how much from iTunes?

Answer: it doesn't, and it never has. 

Windows Mobile basically makes a loss: their entire mobile and entertainment division only made $89 million last quarter and that includes the now profitable Xbox, the embedded segment and all their music devices (inc Zune)... and that's an improvement on the year before!
why did they bother with the Zune? They had many manufacturers selling audio players using their software and badged under the PlaysForSure label. Also, why did they say that they WERE going to make a Zune phone (see arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060915-7756.html)? Perhaps their WM licensees revolted and convinced them not to?