FollowRemember when Apple announced the iPod Shuffle and people couldn’t understand how thousands of songs were stored on one small mp3 player, Nokia is apparently going to release a rival a little late to the party, called the Nokia Guru.
In the past, Microsoft and music has not worked out well, with Steve Jobs criticising the company as soulless at every turn. The Zune was a big burn for Microsoft, looking like a failed attempt at the iPod, Microsoft dropped out of music and has only started getting their jam back on with Xbox Live Music.
The mp3 market has had three stages, niche, popular and now it is back at niche. The only people that have mp3 players are the ones that don’t want to use their phone as a music player or use the mp3 for fitness and other activities where the phone will be a drag.
Nokia could move into this sort of market, they have the applications to make this a success and Microsoft’s full backing of support to make Xbox Live Music run on the mp3 player, the last thing Microsoft is going to do is stop their applications and platforms from being used.
We just are not sure what angle the Nokia Guru is coming from, the iPod is still the dominate mp3 player by a country mile and Apple is rooted in the business, with the complete experience from hardware to software to services.
Almost every tech company on the planet went up against Apple in the iPod days and failed, while the market has died down considerably and almost every tech company on the planet is now battling in the phone and tablet world, Apple still holds the gates on mp3.
