Microsoft - Microsoft's $1 Billion Failure

As just a piece of technology, the Zune was actually really good. I had a second-gen one way back in the day, it just seemed better in pretty much every way than the iPod Classic. Nicer interface, more intuitive and responsive controls, easier to navigate, better desktop software.

I think it's failure was largely just a combination of Microsoft doing a really shitty job of marketing it (never even releasing outside North America doesn't really show much confidence) and it coming out much too late, after iPod had pretty much already become the industry standard for portable music players.

there was a rise?