Job Listsings at Microsoft Indicate Shift in Strategy for Zune

TechFlash has unearthed a few interesting job postings at Microsoft which sheds some light on the potential direction they may be taking with their some beleaguered Zune device. The position available at Redmond HQ states:

“Zune Services is building an entertainment store for a wide range of Zune clients or ‘tuners,’ ” reads a Dec. 2 posting for a Web services development job. “Today these tuners include the Windows PC client, the Zune web site and the Zune device; in the future there will be more. Each of these tuners access a set of rich web services implemented by Zune and soon by Musiwave as well.”

Musiwave is a French company acquired by Microsoft last year; they have agreements with European carriers to provide ringtones, music and other content to mobile subscribers.

Speculation is that one of the new platforms Zune will be expanding to is the Windows Mobile platform, which would make sense, as the platform is very commonly used and has significant media capabilities. Further job postings indicate that the “content ingestion pipeline that powers the entire Zune business” needs to be revamped and that they are looking at “new types of data we can load into our system and expose to make music in Zune an ever richer experience” point to the possibility that Microsoft will be attempting to sell more than just digital music, but perhaps also mobile content like ringtones and mobile video as well.

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