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Consumer Electronics

A Microsoft Chess Move? Free Zunes To Fight The iPod

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Apple (AAPL) has almost the entire portable music player market. Its iTunes and iPod platforms seem to have such a huge lead that gettng market share in the industry is nearly impossible.

Microsoft (MSFT) has launched a competing product, The Zune, but its sales have been modest, while Apple sold over 20 million iPods in the last reported quarter.

So, why not make the Zune free as long as users sign up for a music download subscription plan? As MarketWatch points out, cellular providers like Verizon (VZ) do it every day. Lose money on the device and make money on the service.

Microsoft will have to take a radical approach to the MP3 business. The Apple IPod was in the market for five years before the Zune came out, and it has a cult-like following all around the work.

But, free is free, even attached to a service plan. And, free often works. Finally, a company may have come up with a plan to chase Apple.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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