Zune Launching in Europe?

Microsoft has announced that it might launch the Zune MP3 player in Europe this year:

Microsoft corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile , Research) is happy with the early sales of its Zune music player in the United States and it could launch the service in Europe before the end of 2007, its marketing director said on Saturday.

Jason Reindorp told Reuters that Microsoft was realistic about the challenge it faced in trying to crack into the digital music player market, dominated by Apple Computer (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile , Research) Inc.'s iPod.

"You couldn't get a more entrenched competitor," he said at the annual music industry Midem Net conference in France. "But we feel really good about the first steps that we've taken."

Reindorp said Microsoft was not yet ready to officially announce when it would launch the service in Europe but it could possibly be out before the end of the year.

Before you get too excited, there's something really rather wrong with the product. One of the features is that you can beam a song to someone else. However, many songs do not allow this feature: but you don't know which ones don't until you try to do so.

Really, not very good there, is it?