Interesting Zune marketing position

Zune is now fully announced, and any self respecting neophile from East to West has already digested all of the details currently available. But there's an interesting sub-plot here, as Microsoft try to differentiate themselves from the iPod competition.

Sure, the regular media is full of "iPod Killer" type descriptions for project Zune, but everything we are getting from Microsoft themselves doesn't dwell on "portable music player". Yes, it will play audio, yes, it is a small hard disk based device, and yes it will pair with an online music store, all common with iPod, but the message from Microsoft is that it is so much more.

And of course, they're right. The addition of WiFi changes the game plan immediately. The Zune becomes more of a mobile phone-type tool (without the mobile phone), with sharing, downloading, and potentially IM type chats between Zune users. The use of XNA for development also implies that later models will support much more than the current line of iPods can.

Of course the logical reason is that no-one could ever take on the iPod, and if you come to market with a better iPod, you still have no chance of beating them (as Creative and many others have found). So the device has to be different.

Maybe Microsoft could use the strapline "Think Different".