Zune Still Exists; Adds TV Shows From Viacom, NBCU
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008; 2:07 AM
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), serious about this thing called digital media, has added TV shows to its Zune marketplace. It will offer about 800 TV shows, each for $1.99, for download from companies such as Comedy Central, MTV and NBCU. The number is very small, compared with thousands of episodes from 600 different shows on Apple's (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes store. According to NPD, Apple had 71 percent share of portable media players, while Zune has 4 percent. Microsoft started video downloads for Zune in October last year, as it launched a 2.0 version of the portable player, but was only limited to music videos then.
Some other updates on wireless syncing are being added to Zune this week ( details here), though such social tools are moot without any kind of scale. Small victory on NBCU: the media company pulled its shows from iTunes last year following pricing dispute, but are being offered through Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Unbox and now Zune Marketplace.
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