theregoesdave

Steve Ballmer just revealed that Microsoft is working on porting its Zune MP3 player software to run on the Windows Mobile operating system. This will allow previously released phones to catch up with newer releases of the full-featured multimedia player. Ballmer sees digital content as a major trend in the industry and says that, “if we don’t have the software and services that are useful, helpful and valuable for the consumption of music and video, we are sort of not really a player.”

There’s no official announcement of the software nor any indication of when it will be available, but it could signal that Miscrosoft is ready to take Windows Mobile seriously as a multimedia device in addition to a smartphone and productivity tool. With more competition in the form of the first Android phone in the T-Mobile G1, the newly announced Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the iPhone 3G leading in innovation, Microsoft looks to be playing catch-up in a critical area.

My only question is: why didn’t they build the Zune on their own embedded platform in the first place?

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