Zune Software Possibly on the Sidekick?
Ever since Microsoft bought Danger there’s been much speculation on the marriage of the Zune line with our familiat Sidekicks. While there haven’t been any official announcements on whether or not we’ll ever see these two technologies merge, it’s still interesting to think about. In a recent talk with Steve Ballmer he made some comments about the future of Zune and Microsoft’s vision for smartphones:
SB: “We’re going to keep going with Zune”. It’s two things: Service and a device. The Zune service, that’s going to fan out its footprint. Hardware will continue to improve. “The question is whether even if we flog them heavily, is their profit upside”. We’re going to keep going “I won’t say full steam ahead, because that implies acceleration of investment, but we’re going to sustain our investment.” We like it and the future may be the software/ecosystem on other devices.
On to smartphone market:
SB: Smartphones will go from 10% to 70 or 80% of market next few years. So what will people want? Good experience built in, w/out downloading stuff. You want good price range. iPhone is very expensive phone, without a keyboard. Some people can’t afford them. Sweet spot is phones that cost $150 to $200 to make — forget retail price. iPhone is about $500. We want to provide vendors with ability to make Windows phones up and down the price scale.
Unless you assume Apple and BlackBerry are going to sell the lion’s share of most phones, which I don’t, I think the play for us is to provide broad innovation at many price points.
A $500 phone is not going to work for everybody in every market. The most popular phones in China and India cost about $25 to build. We can’t get our software on that.
SA: Do you care about “touch” on phones? The blogs say you are.
SB: Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. They way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.
My first thought was “No, please don’t replace the DangerOS” but was then it was pointed out to me that the Zune software integrated into the DangerOS, replacing the current MediaPlayer could be a nice change. This is something that we won’t see for the Blade for sure, but it’s an interesting possibility for future devices. Steve comments on the sweet spot for prices on smartphones gives hope that the next Sidekick may not cost a fortune. Here’s hoping! If you want to check out the full Q&A with Steve Ballmer, here’s the article.
via engadget. Thanks Mike!
March 26th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I understand what you’re saying! Reoccurring fees are not right. But it is all speculation! Just wait and see. That’s all we can do.
It is possible the sidekick app stores will revamp their application store to be completely different on the new sidekick. I think NOW that the apple app store has set the standard for the way app stores should be, danger, Microsoft, Android, Blackberry will all follow its footsteps!
March 26th, 2009 at 9:42 am
It isn’t speculation, because we are paying those fees right now for those 8 apps.
I’m speculating the new apps.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I understand that RIGHT NOW there are many reoccurring fee applications in the download catalog of our sidekick. It’s ridiculous that they expect/want us to pay a reoccurring fee when we’re already paying $60-80 dollars a month of the phone itself!! We should be treated better and offered more productive apps… not 15 year old applications.. But then again, I think this sidekick is more an a children/teenager’s phone rather an adults. (By the way, I’m 20.) But I love my sidekick. I feel like if I left the phone I would highly regret it because there isn’t another phone that can do everything I want and need it to. Sure it has it’s downsides but I’m not complaining. Like I said, it does what it needs to.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Some improvements the new Sidekick should have (in my opinion) are:
threaded texting
internal hard drive
tabbed web browsing
more user friendly web browsing
youtube/facebook/twitter ..blah blah
louder speaker
highe resolution camera
better app stores
I wouldn’t mind a touch screen
I don’t use the media player often…but who knows. Maybe a zune media player would be pretty neat!
AND MORE SOPHISTICATED LOOK.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Damn dude, you hit the nail right on the head!
That is exactly what I want.
I also want the following:
1. Free ringtones. I don’t care anymore, I want them NOW! its the year 2 thousand and freaking 9. My mom has free ringtones fro crying out loud she is almost 60 years old!
2. Microsoft Outlook Exhchange email/contacts/calender support
3. Better Developer Kit more access to api’s.
4. Stereo Bluetooth.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:07 am
i would love to see a touch screen sidekick come out this year, but they would need to keep the keyboard. like the g1. i agree with the need for tabbed browsing, a louder speaker, and a better camera.
what bugs me is that we can’t take a picture and then set it as our phones background. we can only set it as our screen saver. the ringtones i’m not too worried about
March 26th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I agree. Free ringtones would be nice. I think that market went down the drown a LONG time ago. I have yet to buy a sngoe ring tone with my LX. I felt robbed the last one I purchased a ringtone because I realized I was paying $1.99 for a 15 second clip. So needless to say, I’m done buying apps/rigtones from the sidekick catalog. =p
Danger is smart tho… Are they the first company to offer a download catalog aka an app store for it’s users??
March 26th, 2009 at 11:46 am
agree with meme, you should work for danger
March 26th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Listen, ringtones are necessary, same with backgrounds.
They can do it on other Sidekick networks, infact if you look at the online users manual for the Kick it tells you how to install free ringtones DAMN you t-mobile.
Every other phone can do it, they need to get with the times.
People still buy ringtones on the iphone, but you can get free ones also.
every day that passes, my LX becomes more and more ancient like Sega Genisis, and VHS casettes.
GET WITH THE TIMES!
March 26th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
iphone is better than the sidekick 09. sidekicks are becoming WACK!
March 26th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Agreed!
March 26th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
lol. i did didnt i?? i still stand by my statement however i would lik eto clear it up for you.
i don tlike apple software. i like the hardware. windows runs so much better on the mac if you can hack it or get someone else to hack it for you. its not legal but i have…. “seen it done” before.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
recognizedakick Says:
@Gizmo
Dude, you wrote that long essay about how ur in love with ur Sidekick and the jump key then all of a sudden u start talking about leaving the Sidekick altogether?! I don’t get u man. I think crazyforkicks/crazyforiphones/crazyforwhat?/crazyforAPPLE/justcrazy4leavintmobile has gotten into ur head. Stay loyal and tru like u started out to be. I was actually startin to think that u were 1 of the few ppl on here who’s posts were actually worth reading. Don’t jump ship man!
i dont want to jump ship at all. i really want to see danger do better. it feels like we are coming to the end of a great thing that could have been so much better but only the once that have used a kick know it. everybody that owns a kick is always looking at it for one reason or another. everybody that i know that owns one of these things is always looking at it. sometimes its a game, sometimes its web browsin, textin, emailing, beating up those keys for whatever reason. i and my fellow kickers love the kick. my gripe is all the things that are starting to look real silly on a phone. like having to pay for ring times, somebody mentioned that and its true. before i got my first kick i had free tingtones. i just loaded them on my cd card and i was in business. the sk 3 came out and i was all for it, it seemed as if having to pay for ringtones was a small price to pay for having suck a bad a$$ phone. then the lx came out and i went out and got it in the first month it was out. i paid full price for it and it was worth every penny. i dont care about the iphone and i dont care to compete with it but if i cant get some free apps, ringtones, something as simple as making my kid’s pic a background then im going to have to leave man. as much as i love this phone it just becomes so impersonal when i have to pay for 15 secs of a song that i have to select from a list of songs that i prob dont really want anyway. i like my houston underground music and i want it to play when my phone rings. i make my own music as a hobby and i want to hear it when my phone rings. danger is screwing us because there are crappy phones out there that do half the stuff the kick does but are more customizeable.
i love my kick and i wouldnt sell it or trade it. i would keep it but i wouldnt be able to use it anymore if danger continues to milk me for every little thing. if i do have to jump ship it would be like having that ex girlfriend that has become a friend. the one that you dont have sex with anymore but keep in touch with because the relationship was great but the sex was bad. lol. you know what i mean right?? having a kick is becoming more and more like having a great woman that just cant keep her teeth off it no matter what you do or what you tell her. its becoming like having a woman that can bake a cake out this world but cant cook or even prepare a boal of cereal. lmao. you gotta understand me when i put it like that.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Can we please keep in mind that the Zune/Sidekick merger is NOT even confirmed. Some people are speculating on the price of a media player that comes standard on the device but we don’t even know if the Zune will ever be a part of the SK! That’s kind of absurd.
I don’t get the need for all these apps. I don’t have apps, not because of their fee but because they’re useless to me. I only own Newsroom. If you MUST have an itunes app or a weather app or whatever then I guess you should get a device where you could get it for free, that makes sense. But stop whining and hating. Its getting tired.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Hey meme, which messenger you usin? Aim, Msn, or Yahoo? We can chat about it there.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:56 am
i posted a comment but it didnt get approved
March 27th, 2009 at 1:58 am
i wonder why mine didnt get approved but the ones that bash the kick make it through like this is a anti kick site. what up with that??
March 27th, 2009 at 1:59 am
i can see my comment now. page dint load all the way. my bad. carry on then.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:34 am
You’re wack! Do you currently have an iPhone?
March 27th, 2009 at 5:58 am
Oh….. so that’s what threaded texting is……… that’s my brother has, he has the g1(I personly don’t like the way it opens and the way that the keyboard is.) But the texting is nice.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:17 am
all the people that don’t like the sidekicks shouldn’t even bother coming to this site. i mean really. go to a site for YOUR phone and complain about sidekicks there. not here.
i’m willing to give the zune player a try as long as i can still put my own music from my laptop onto my device and i don’t have to pay to put songs on it like from the zune store and things. if this happens then i’ll be pretty upset. not gonna lie.
i love my sidekick lx it’s holding up pretty well considering that it’s missing an enitre corner from when my little sister dropped it onto my tile floor and it will no longer read my memory card. i’m getting this new sidekick as soon as it comes out. i can’t wait
March 27th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
That will be cool a new media player =]
& every1 shut up about all the other phones!!! go2 a iphone or g1 site and stay off the sidekick 1, no1 is here to talk about other phones , when are some of you hard headed ppl going2 relize that , i hope all the sidekick lovers that are on here stay , and not turn on the sidekick
March 27th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Im just curious. How many people have actually switched over to the G1 or the iPhone? LOL I think a lot of people in here are all talk and when it comes down to it, they will eventually buy the new sidekick when it conesbout. For me, it doesn’t make sense to switch to the G1 or the iPhone. My data plan price would increase by $15 dollars. HECK NO!!
March 27th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Dude, your gonna pay the extra $15 if you upgrade to the 3g sidekick. Mark my words. I’ll bet you my left testicle
March 27th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I’ll take you up on that bet. That would lose a lot of customers. Mark MY words!
March 27th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I just bought a G1 but its for my dad. Its really not a bad phone. But I gotta stick with my kick because its just more convenient. The iphone is will always be a great phone but then again so will the sidekick. Anyone who gets tired of the kick and decides to leave it then thats on you and a mistake you will have to live with. Just dont come on here crying about it. Youre more than likely to keep ur kick in ur back pocket just in case anywayz. I’m jus sayin =D
March 27th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
LOL so you didn’t buy the G1 for yourself. How much is that plan for the G1 by the way?
March 28th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
We dont even know if its COMING OUT! BUT I WANT IT!!!!!!!!!!
March 29th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
don’t you think it is wierd that microsoft lets you listen to itunes???? but anyways, ebay on the web browser is perfect, no app needed, and who the hell owns acounts to facebook, my space and twitter when its the same crap?!?!?!? you seriously cut down on your bill if you use the mobile sights on the kicks browser. I doubt they will charge for an mp3 app when its already integrated on the phone, get a bigger memory card or hope for a hard drive. just wait til the phone comes out or the final spec sheet to whine about the could have beens.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
The plan is 39.99. And NO! I recognize the sidekick!! My dad just needs a better phone than the RazoR =D
March 29th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Um…okay. I guess I see what ur sayin?? But just so you know Imma girl and cant really relate with that example you were usin. lol However I do see your point but it seems like you just havent really made up ur mind yet. You’re still in the debate mode. O well, I dont really care with keepin up wit u anymore to tell u the truth. All I gotta stay is hold onto the kick as long as u can and when u cant deal with it anymore than do what u gotta do. I’m jus sayin! =D