Toshiba to build Microsoft’s iPod competitor
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 26, 2006 at 2:26pm
Microsoft’s Zune, its challenge to the iPod and iTunes Music Store, will be built by Toshiba and allow people to “DJ” by wirelessly sharing music, US regulatory agency filings showed.
Plans submitted to the Federal Communications Commission by Japanese electronics giant Toshiba provided a glimpse at the workings of an MP3 player designed by Microsoft, notes Yahoo! News. The device was referred to in the filing by the code name “Pyxis.”
The Microsoft MP3 player would tune in to FM radio as well as enable users to transfer video, pictures and music files between personal computers and the handheld devices, Yahoo! News. Zune/Pyxis would also be able to link wirelessly, and music could be selectively streamed live to as many as four other MP3 players by using a feature labeled “DJ,” the article adds.
Microsoft told financial analysts earlier in July that it would take up to six years and “hundreds of millions” of dollars for the Zune media player strategy to become a success. “This is not a six-month initiative, where somehow in six months we will have captured the marketplace,” Robbie Bach, Microsoft entertainment & devices division president, said. “This will be a four-, five-, six-year investment horizon.”
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
