Buried deep in some Microsoft support website is some language that indicates that yes, Zune is no more. We had heard a while ago that production was winding down but you could still see the products for sale, including the tragicomic brown Zune. Now, there’s nothing.
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.
It goes on to say that warranties will be honored on the Zune device but that the focus is now on the Windows Phone.
It’s easy to read this as an indictment of the Zune product itself and how square Microsoft was and is. Fair charges all, even though the Zune was supposedly a pretty good product. But I think this is also about the diminished role of the non-phone media player. Apple is apparently getting ready to kill the iPod Classic and the iPod Shuffle in order to concentrate on the iPod Touch, which is basically an iPhone without the phone.
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