Translation From PR-Speak to English of Zune Marketing Manager Brian Seitz’s Response to the Question of Whether the Zune Will ‘Open Up for Third-Party App Developers’

Zune marketing manager Brian Seitz:

It’s hard to say right now. If you look around the company at other places where things like this are important, Windows Mobile rises to the top. They have devices which are always connected, which make applications like maps really cool and important.

On a sometimes-connected device, what people are using them for are games. So what we didn’t want to do was build two parallel app store experiences that didn’t work together.

Right now our product roadmaps didn’t line up perfectly for us to snap to what they’re doing or vice versa. That being said, we know people want things like this on their devices so we’re going to build them ourselves, they’re going to be super high-quality, and they’re going to be free.

Down the road if there’s a way we can work with Windows Mobile or another group inside the company that’s building an app store and take advantage of that, that’s something we’ll look into.

Translation:

No, because our mobile strategy is a convoluted mess.

★ Tuesday, 15 September 2009