Zii Coming To Phones? Next ZEN to Get Social Networking?
Rumormongering forthcoming: While it’s almost assured that there will be a Zii inside a Creative player by the end of the calendar year, Creative has always strayed away from venturing into the phone market. Change may be in the air, however, as a survey from the Zii team today asked a peculiar question- Are you using a Smartphone, 3.5G phone, Blackberry or Pushmail service? A followup question asked what features you use most on your phone, and it listed some pretty standard smartphone features like email and web browsing. It’s interesting that they would ask this, as Creative hasn’t touched the mobile phone market, and their wifi implementation on the ZEN X-Fi came off as half baked at best. It could also just be an innocent question to gauge the demographics of interested users, or it could signal a new direction for the new ZiiLabs with Creative. Either way, it caught my eye. This survey was sent to anyone and everyone who signed up for the Zii newsletters.
Also of note, there’s a question about which social network(s) the survey taker use. There hasn’t been any social networking integration in any Creative devices (the ZEN X-Fi has Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger support), so it’s curious as to why they would ask a question. But several theories with only miniscule facts suggest that it could be part of the touchscreen ZEN that Creative has had brewing for quite some time. While nothing official has been release, there have been several oddities that official Creative sources have dropped- namely Phil O’Shaughnessy (VP of Creative Americas). epiZENter.net asked him about a forthcoming Zii-powered ZEN and he gave a sly “Stay tuned” response. My advice: stay tuned!
Take the survey for yourself at zii.com.
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