Ipod Rival from Microsoft, any chances ??

Once again the news websites and blogs are flooded with yet another Microsoft's product named Zune. This is supposed to be a Ipod Rival and is expected to take away Apple's share. As far as I am concerned, I don't see any chance for such a device to succeed, Apple Ipod is all about hype and people mostly buy it for its name rather than its need. Yup some ppl might genuinely be interested in watching movies on a ipod video or playing songs while travelling long distance but other merely use it as a status symbol. (Not that I don't intend to buy one too, but thats not the point ;))

Not that there aren't any Mp3 players currently in the market, ppl just don't buy them. Creative and others had already introduced portable mp3 before IPod came but somehow things didn't work well, possibly iTunes was missing. Hopefully M$ will have a competitor for iTunes too, then there should be some kind of Music store, so a lot of things have to succeed before such a device can be called successful. Creating as much hype as Apple has about IPod/iTunes is much more difficult compared to creating a good hardware to solve the task at hand.

Recently there was lot of hype regarding a device or project called Origami. Now I find it difficult to remember its name and I have no idea if that device actually came to Market or not. I guess its safer to wait and see the competitor arrive rather than predicting lots of product getting killed (Ipod Killer etc nouns are too common these days).