It Was a Mercy Killing

Microsoft, facing grim reality, has cancelled the Zune. It will not be missed by consumers, although my Akismet spam-catcher is going to find oodles of new free time. Anyway, here’s the word from Dan Frommer:

After years of mediocrity and weak sales, Microsoft is finally killing off its Zune media player, Bloomberg reports.

This is the right move. Microsoft should be focusing all of its portable-gadget efforts on Windows Phone 7, to try and compete with Apple and Google there.

Don’t worry — Microsoft is hard at work on a brand new music service, and they’re dead certain it will do better than Zune. And better than Plays-for-Sure. It certainly couldn’t do any worse.