28 Nov 2006 1942H

Mouth Hanging prize of the week: Microsoft majorly missing a macro multi-channel moment

Hardly news, but, PiperJaffray says that only 8% of the floorwalkers in a survey of 40 retailers recommended the Zune. The iPod increased recommendability 9% over last year, lending credence to the idea that certain things only make sense when you have something else to compare them against. The kicker is, the survey team also got responses like “I’ve never heard of the Zune. Who makes that?” Not. Good.

It’s easy to pile on the hurt when everyone else is already on the pile. In fact the longer I do this stuff, the more I think that it’s more the case that great launches rarely happen, because of internal politics, pressures to produce, resource wars, and the like. People often forget that it’s taken five generations of iPods to get to the place they are today. And the iTunes music store and iTunes itself? Version 7 now. Sometimes it’s enough to just get the product out and then start gathering your user research data off the support logs, especially when you can weather the storm like Microsoft can. It’s expensive of course: the general number I’ve seen floated is something like a hundred times cheaper to fix software problems before launch.

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2 responses to "Mouth Hanging prize of the week: Microsoft majorly missing a macro multi-channel moment"

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29 Nov 2006 1308H

tim writes:

Microsoft has huge cash reserves. They can afford to launch a crap product early just to get data. Eventually, they’ll be a serious player in the market.

29 Nov 2006 2015H

me writes:

Well, precisely. Look how successful they’ve been with the Windows platform. It’s the proverbial elephant in the living room, the 800 lb gorilla. But, the thing to remember is that they know when to cut their losses and they’re not afraid to cut bait and run if the product is not doing well. No one remembers Microsoft Bob, but. . .

Here’s a review of the first iPod back in 2001, just by way of comparison.

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