Microsoft Reloads XP: Microsoft Preps US Launch of MSN Music, WMP 10, Portable Media Center Devices

Microsoft Reloads XP: Microsoft Preps US Launch of MSN Music, WMP 10, Portable Media Center Devices
The Microsoft Windows XP Reloaded marketing campaign cranks up this week with the launch of Windows Media Player (WMP) 10, MSN Music, and the partner-made Portable Media Center devices. These releases follow the shipment of XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, both of which became available in early August and precede a host of other XP Reloaded releases that many have pegged for October. Chief among those second-stage releases, of course, is the next version of XP Media Center Edition (MCE), a product veiled in much secrecy.

With a public beta release earlier this summer and many public pronouncements from Microsoft about its design, WMP 10 is largely a known quantity. But MSN Music, Microsoft's first serious foray into online music services in the United States, has been the cause of much speculation. And although some people have suggested that the service will quickly relegate Apple Computer's successful iTunes to the dustbin of history, I'm not sure that's going to be the case.


More important, perhaps, is what's the difference? The online music market is currently tiny, only occupying about 2 percent of the $1.7 billion music business in the United States, and much, much less worldwide; even the most positive outlooks see online music occupying just 12 percent of the overall music business in the United States by 2007. As David Card, the research director of Jupiter Research, told the “New York Times” this week, "for Microsoft, [entering the online music business] is like Slate, not Xbox. It's a pretty small opportunity right now."