The Zune is criticised for it’s poor market share and is regarded as a failure. It’s important to remember that it took three years for the iPod to get market dominance, and it’ll take a lot longer than that for anyone to make inroads into it. To criticise the Zune for a poor market share misses the point. It’s like criticising a child because its first steps weren’t of olympic standards.
No. The Zune is criticized because before the iPod, there were no mp3 players for grandma. Apple obviously created a winning product. Depending on how charitable you want to be, Microsoft either 1) observed the same market opportunity and took longer to create an inferior product or 2) shamelessly ripped off the ipod, and did a poor job at it.
The author also compares a company with a market cap of $250 Billion to a child. The big boys play for keeps. There's no excuse for "well, they did their best" at companies of this scale. To quote another 80s movie: "Do or do not, there is no try".