Microsoft launched the Zune five years after the iPod and never made a dent

When Apple launched the iPod in 2001 and the iTunes Store in 2003, it defined the legal digital-music era and took an enormous share of it. Microsoft, which had watched the market develop through its MSN Music service and Windows Media players, decided to fight back directly. In November 2006 — five years after the iPod — it launched the Zune, a portable media player with its own music store and subscription service, built with Toshiba.

The Zune was a competent device with a few clever touches, like the ability to share songs wirelessly with nearby Zunes. But it arrived into a market the iPod already owned, and it gave consumers little reason to switch. The first-generation Zune was mocked for its bulky size and its brown color, and its US market share stayed low — well behind Apple, and even behind cheaper players from SanDisk and Creative. Microsoft kept iterating, but the gap never closed.

The Zune also became known for an embarrassing bug: on December 31, 2008, many first-generation Zune 30s froze, brought down by a leap-year error in the clock driver; they recovered the next day. Microsoft discontinued all Zune hardware in October 2011 and wound down the music service in 2012, folding what remained into the Xbox Music and Xbox Video brands. The Zune is remembered as the textbook 'me-too' product that arrived too late to a market an incumbent had already won.