iPod is like the Sony Walkman of the 80s?

When it comes time to look for historical analogs in the iPod discussion, most people look to the once ubiquitous Walkman. [...] Sony players were the most popular, hitting the sweet spot of price, quality and brand recognition but there were plenty of other players that sold significant quantities. [...]

Under that scenario, the Zune is a bad thing for the iPod. No matter how horrible the Zune turns out to be the mere presence of a player made by Microsoft will suck away some of the iPod’s market. If the Zune was demonstrably superior things are even worse, and the iPod is suddenly just another .mp3 player. The probability is that the Zune won’t be horrible and it will neither be great so one would expect, using the Sony Walkman as the model, some significant share of the market to go to the Zune. Once again, a little business for everyone? Don’t bet on it!

Or maybe iPod is like Microsoft Word? 

Turns out that the iPod, in terms of the market, has more in common with Microsoft Word than the Walkman. Surely, the functionality is much closer to the Walkman but, where the Walkman was a standalone player, the iPod is all about the format. Not the Fairplay versus whatever DRM scheme Zune uses, but rather the interaction with the computer. In short, the iPod Zune thing isn’t about the hunks of plastic, chips and screens it is about the being the iPod or being the Zune, there is no middle ground.

The winners of Format Wars 

There is something odd about format wars, something that differentiates them from the usual tussles in the marketplace. In a format war it isn’t the superior product that wins, the winner is the product people expect to win. Apple provides a hard to ignore example of this. The early Macs were clearly superior for computer neophytes (a category that included most everyone in the late eighties) but were trounced by IBM PCs and compatibles. While the situation has been examined from every angle, the truth is that people bought PCs because they assumed PCs would win. In the world of format wars, prophecies are always self-fulfilling.

If this is the case and we are at the beginning of a format war, Apple has the 5 year old iPod success and Microsoft is the new player, promissing new ways of music sharing with the Zune. 

So share with us your prophecy!