Microsoft plans to fight rivals by cutting Zune HD prices

13th February, 2010 by adina
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Microsoft has silently cut the prices on the Zune HD through a temporary promo. The price for the touchscreen media player is now $190 for a 16GB model at Amazon, which means $32 less than the original price, while the price of the 32GB model has dropped to $250. Prices at Amazon are closely matched by other retailers, like Walmart.

Microsoft’s store has also dropped the prices of the Zune HD by a smaller amount, a 16GB version being now sold for $200, while the 32GB model is $270.

The official version of Microsoft is that the new prices are part of “sales” and may be only temporary, although there is no clue given about if or when this promo would end. The recent cuts make the Zune HD successfully compete with the iPod touch, as long as it has about twice as much capacity for a price similar to that of an iPod touch or a significant discount when keeping the same capacity.

These price drops are an attempt to stimulate sales after the holiday season and reveal that sales have cooled since the release of the device in September last year. Microsoft has appealed to such cuts in the past as Zune players did not fare strongly and the effective restart of the line did not have a direct impact on the company’s increase of the market share. Microsoft has had about 2 percent of the media player market compared to Apple’s 70 percent.


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