• Seattle Post-Intelligencer , Wednesday, September 10, 2008 10:18 AM

Apple's iPod has 70% of the U.S. portable digital player market compared with Microsoft Zune's 3%, according NPD Group data, but market share is "not the sole measure of how effective we are in the business," says Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division. He cites the role Zune fills in the company's "connected entertainment" strategy -- which aims to give people easy access to music, videos and other media on devices, game consoles, PCs and other hardware.

The comments came a day after Microsoft showed its third-generation Zune players, and as Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled a refreshed iPod lineup. Jobs showed new features including one called Genius, which lets iPod and iTunes users create automatic playlists of songs from their music libraries that are designed to go well with one another.

Before launching the Zune initiative, Microsoft focused primarily on providing the underlying software technology for music devices from a variety of hardware makers. The company abandoned that strategy and came out with the player of its own after it became clear that Apple was going unchecked.

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