New Money Search Engines : BING.com, Zune HD

When Microsoft talks innovation, it tends to sound like deja vu all over again.

BING is not the latest alarm notifying a blue screen but the name of Redmond's latest philosopher's stone / quest for the Holy Grail / shoot'em all kill app : a search engine meant to compete with Google. Not at the user experience level but at the announcer experience level, judging by the teaser (maybe "trailer" is more appropriate) released on bing.com, where contextual advertising stars from every angle. The actual URL where you can enjoy this short movie is decisionengine.com, which may lead you into thinking that you won't be looking at things you don't want to find, only at relevant bits of knowledge for sound decision making. Comparing prices, sorting URLs by categories... that kind of totally "unknown" features. The main news here : Live Search is still alive.

ZUNE goes HD. It remains a music / multimedia player, but now you can also play games, and even surf the internet. FM radio, which proved successful on the first version, becomes HD radio. The screen becomes a touch screen. And as if to prove Zune failed on the core promise (competing with iPod and other sexier devices), Microsoft added familiar and sure bets from its roster (Windows CE). Zune synchronizes with Xbox, and the brand could become Microsoft's central video and multimedia content platform to compete with more successful stores.

Zune is not the iPhone killer. Bing is not the Google killer. But Microsoft intends to remain a killer.



"Microsoft confirms Zune HD coming this fall"
"Zune HD will be a music player, not a super-device"

The times they are a-changin'

Microsoft will have to replace their connecting cables for millions of X-Boxes but a big wireless victory makes for these minor cable losses as Nokia accepts to provide a bridge between OMA and Windows through a key entry point (DRM) and around a key solution (Windows Media Player)*. The common targets of the former archrivals : music majors today, movie majors tomorrow (anyway they are often the same players). All major content providers should follow and sooner or later, and operators will get real and get rid of Real. That's what Microserves are wishing very hard from their King county campus.
Are the telecom-IT wars over or does this Yalta mean we're heading for a cold war ?
Since vendors can never agree on universal standards by themselves and are not eager to reproduce the WiFi scenario anytime soon (ie IT players creating the market in unison without waiting for customers to ask for it), the show belongs to those who can actually show the money, and this means either the few big clients with big bucks (ie MNOs) or the multitude of small clients who decide which direction the big rivers will flow (ie WMA endusers).
And handset manufacturers don't like the way MNOs are trying to get a grip on them, the way they consider giving up handset subsidies to the enduser and instead kind of financing / patronizing vendors, be it for speeding up the evolutions of 3G or the avaibility of handsets and even laptops.
Setting new standards used to be about long processes of discussions and negociations entertained by florentine attacks and betrayals, with a celebration feast among survivors to wrap it up. Now the war is a neverending race involving all fields and players, coopetition making sure anyone is an ally and a foe at the same time.
The good news is MNOs are getting smarter and watching the game will be much more fun. Stephane MOT
* see Nokia's and Microsoft's press releases