Microsoft appears nowhere near the Zune brand name

"It's very curious that Microsoft is distancing Zune from Microsoft and Windows at a time when the company is spending hundreds of millions to launch Vista, which has music as a huge part of the experience," said Michael Gartenberg, analyst with JupiterResearch. Vista is the operating system Microsoft is scheduled to unveil in January.

One reason for that strategy may be the disconnect between Microsoft's reputation as a corporate monolith and the 18-24 hipster demographic that Zune hopes to attract with its peer-to-peer wireless music sharing capability, and pre-loaded library of independent music content.

We have seen Steve Ballmer maybe one or two times talking about the Zune. There is not a single page dedicated to the Zune on Microsoft website. Even the Xbox has its section on the corporate site. The Microsoft name is nowhere on Zune.net and ads. The only place where we can see the Microsoft name is on the copyright and on "Microsoft points" system.

This is probably a wise strategy anyway for Microsoft since they are certainly not to coolest company for teenagers and even less for indie music fans! But can they really hide?

Source: mediapost.com