Microsoft Zune held up as example in how not to do product planning

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Published onJanuary 17, 2017

published onJanuary 17, 2017

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A little more than ten years ago, Microsoft entered the portable media player market with the Zune 30, an iPod competitor which also led the company to create the Zune marketplace to distribute digital media content. Unfortunately, the media players never managed to grab a significant market share in the US, and Microsoft ultimately discontinued both the hardware and the brand in 2012.

Tony Scherba, president and founding partner of design studio Yeti LLC, looked back at Microsoft’s Zune failure in an interesting article published today onEntrepreneur.com. According to the product development expert, it’s clear that the first Zune player was released way too late to make a significant impact on the market. “When Zune debuted, Apple had captured nearly the entire mp3 market and would announce the first-generation iPhone — which would lead the smartphone market to quash standalone mp3 players altogether — just months later,” he explained.

However, Scherba added that Microsoft could still have turned Zune into a success if the company had done “proper product planning,” which is a necessary step to make sure that new products meet an actual consumer demand. And it seems that Microsoft was well aware that Zune wasn’t much different than Apple’s popular iPods according to Scherba. “Microsoft executive Robbie Bach, who headed Zune, later called it a “chasing” product, which, he said, gave customers little motivation to swap their iPods for Microsoft’s offering,” he added.

For a company designing new products, product planning starts with identifying a problem to solve and ends with the creation of an product roadmap which will take into account market conditions and customer feedback. However, Microsoft made a mistake right from the beginning, according to Scherba. “While Zune had some capabilities the iPod didn’t, potential users — many of whom had already bought an iPod — simply didn’t think the product addressed a pressing need,” he explained Later on, the product development expert also thinks that the company didn’t prototyped Zune adequately: “If it had, Microsoft would have learned prior to release that consumers didn’t truly value Zune’s features. The companyassumedthey did, and that was its downfall,” he added.

Zune is probably one of Microsoft’s biggest failures from the last ten years, but it’s not clear if Microsoft could have done really better with proper product planning: just a couple of months after the introduction of the first Zune media player, the launch of the first iPhone was the first nail in the coffin for portable media players, which have obviously become a niche market as of today.

In just six years in the market, the Zune brand managed to attract a loyal fan base of users though. As we reported two months ago, you can find on the Zune subreddit a lot of passionnate users whocollect, repair and share tips about how to fix technical issues with the now-unsupported media players. Windows phones may enjoy the same kind of cult following, and you may also think that Microsoft reiterated the same product planning mistakes with its mobile OS over the past few years. However, Microsoft execs have beenteasing the “ultimate mobile device” last yearand we hope that lessons have now been learned.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time).

For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web.

Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they’re looking for.

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Radu Tyrsina

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Microsoft Zune held up as example in how not to do product planning