[Vorbis] Microsoft will add support for Vorbis and FLAC on their Zune player!

[Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves]

Microsoft officially confirmed on Friday that it is working on adding
Vorbis and FLAC support on its music and entertainment "project"
dubbed Zune, which includes hardware and software products that offer
users on-the-go access to music and entertainment.

"Under the Zune brand, we will deliver Vorbis and FLAC support on our
family of hardware and software products, the first of which will be
available this year through a Zune firmware update," said Chris
Stephenson, general manager of marketing for Microsoft, in a prepared
statement. "We see a great opportunity to bring together technology
and community to allow consumers to explore and discover music
together, and we think offering support for better and popular formats
is part of that goal."

Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp said the company plans to issue
the firmware update sometime in the middle of next month. Reindorp
said the downloadable update will also offer other performance
improvements, but no major feature updates to the player, which
debuted in November.

"In mid-May we will release a firmware update which will address
Vorbis and FLAC support, improving overall software reliability and
efficiency," he said in an e-mail to CNET News.com.

Reindorp said the Zune held its No. 2 spot in hard drive-based digital
music players in January, citing NPD numbers that give the company 9.9
percent of that market. The company still trails Apple's iPod in the
hard drive-based music area and does not yet have a flash-based device
to compete with the iPod Nano or Shuffle.

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Oh, by the way, April Fools!  Did I mention that already?  XIPH DOES
NOT ENDORSE THE ZUNE IN ANY WAY.