ZuneHD: It's the Ecosystem that Matters

There is no shortage of coverage about the ZuneHD, the direct competitor to the iPhone, which Microsoft announced yesterday. For all intents and purposes it's pretty much an iPhone knock-off which is simply showing that Microsoft is not blind to the success of the iPhone.

While the mainstream press seems focused on its features (which include multitouch) I'm more interested in the ecosystem around the ZuneHD.

The iPhone has an ecosystem that is absolutely huge with over 35,000 applications available for easy download, purchase, and installation on your phone.

As I mentioned before that's something that is really going to be hard for other multitouch smartphone makers to complete. How can you catch up? Having said that, I think ZuneHD - assuming it offers features comperable to the iPhone - has a pretty good chance of competing on the ecosystem level. Why? Because there are millions of Microsoft developers who would like nothing better than to write iPhone-like applications using Microsoft .NET rather than learning a new platform, namely the iPhone SDK, Objective-C and Coco.

Don't underestimate the the size of the Microsoft development community or, given a decent product, their ability to complete with applications in the market place. Take the XBox for example. Could anyone but Microsoft have cracked the video game industry? I doubt it yet XBox is a serious compeditor against Sony and Nintendo. Could the ZuneHD offer real compitition to the iPhone both in terms of features and ecosystem? Assuming the product is solid and the application store is easy to use, I think it can.