Zune Adds Wireless Downloads

The third iteration of Microsoft’s Zune portable music players will let users download music over Wi-Fi Internet connections and includes other features that will help users discover new music. The new features, which will be available for older Zunes via software updates, could encourage more users to buy a Zune Pass subscription to access the millions of songs available through the Zune Marketplace service. They also give the Zune a clear advantage over Apple’s iPod in many areas, although Microsoft will have to overcome negative impressions of earlier Zune models to chip away at the iPod’s massive market share.

Wi-Fi, Zune Pass Play Bigger Roles

Released in Sept. 2008, the third generation of Zunes includes two new models with a 120GB hard drive (the previous largest drive was 80GB), and 16GB of flash memory (previous flash-based models topped out at 8GB), as well as two new color schemes: blue and all-black. These new models share the same design as the second generation of Zunes released in fall 2007, including the ZunePad for navigating through the device’s on-screen menu, but they don’t have touch screens like Apple’s iPod Touch.