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Microsoft's Zune HD is officially dead, yet again

By

On October 11, 2011, 8:30 AM EST

It seems that Microsoft has finally decided to kill off the Zune HD once and for all. The announcement was made official during the Windows Phone Radio podcast and the company has reinstated the end-of-life message on the Zune support page.

The defunct media player suffered the same fate twice last week. The device was initially pulled from the shelves at Zune.net, leading most in the media to assume the product line was a goner. It was later resurrected by a company spokesperson on Twitter, saying that product page was still live and that a publishing mishap was to blame for the error.

Microsoft then updated their Zune support page with an official message that indicated they would no longer be making any new Zune players and instead were moving forward with their Windows Phone platform for mobile music and video.

The very next day, Microsoft retracted the Zune statement and said the device was available once again. The company also removed the explanation on the Zune support page as if it had never happened.

As of today, the discontinued statement has been put back online and the Zune player is listed as out of stock at Microsoft’s online store. The Windows Phone Radio podcast team also indicate the device is no longer being made (around 12 minutes, 30 seconds into the broadcast).

At this point we have no idea what Redmond is up to and it seems neither do they. It’s entirely possible that Microsoft is trying to milk every bit of publicity from the media as possible, which could be working. Another idea is that they are simply undecided on what they want to do with existing stock of the media player. Or maybe there are some serious communication issues between departments.

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User Comments (10)

Post a comment
Guest
on October 11, 2011
8:43 AM

Where's ZuneMan when you need him?

Reply

Lurker101
on October 11, 2011
8:56 AM

Give it a week before you declare it definitely dead. They might resurrect it again/

Reply

katoDRAGON
on October 11, 2011
9:50 AM

Guest said:

Where's ZuneMan when you need him?

here: http://www.zune.net

Reply

lawfer
on October 11, 2011
10:01 AM

They were just testing. While Zune was a great player, it certainly had a hard time selling. All Microsoft did was to get some publicity out of it: I think this was all a test for them to see if killing off the Zune would have had an impact on consumers. Apparently it didn't, and there you have it, it's gone for good.

Reply

Guest
on October 11, 2011
10:47 AM

incompetence.

Reply

MilwaukeeMike
on October 11, 2011
12:33 PM

Didn't we have an article about the iPod being discontinued too? There just doesn't seem to be a need for these players now that their functions are built into our smart phones. Hopefully the remaining stock will be really cheap!

Reply

Guest
on October 11, 2011
1:04 PM

LMAO....!!! Give it up flip - flop M$oft.... I wonder which of your product is next?

Reply

Guest
on October 11, 2011
1:08 PM

it was DOA anyways. What took them so long to realize that? Greed!!

Reply

kissx
on October 16, 2011
8:16 PM

I still have my second gen.zune and stiil love it.Hope it will still work for years to come because i am not sure about getting a windows 7 phone,

Reply

captaincranky
on October 17, 2011
12:01 AM

I hope they don't kill it entirely, at least not until they release the, "Samuel Clemons Signature Model".......

Reply

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