The
Zune Digital Music Player is Microsoft's bid to unseat the Apple iPod as the
dominant device in the portable music player market. It launched late last
year and managed to capture 10.2% of the hard drive based player market in that
short time, but has been a target of technical criticism and has failed to spark
the sort of cult-like following Apple has with its iPod.
The leader of that group at Microsoft, Bryan Lee, has announced plans to
leave the company soon to pursue other interests. Lee was influential in
both development of the Zune, and in shaping the XBox game console business
within the Redmond company. Lee will be replaced by J Allard, a rising
star within the company who has recently overseen the XBox brand as it has
reached increasing levels of success in recent years.