On Thursday, Microsoft confirmed the prices for its new line of Zune HD media players making it crystal clear that it is in competition with its rival Apple iPod by costing it lower than them. The price of the Zune HD is $219.99 for a 16GB unit and $289.99 for the 32GB version. 

From Thursday onwards even pre orders for the media players also have started by the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant and consumers can order at Amazon.com, Best Buy, Walmart and Microsoft.

Microsoft said in a statement, that deliveries of the new Zune will begin Sept. 15, the same day the players become available for sale in stores.

The new devices compete drastically in price as well as design with the iPod Touch.

Microsoft stated in May that the new units will feature a built-in HD Radio receiver, high-definition (HD) video output capabilities, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) touch screen, Wi-Fi and an Internet browser. 

One analyst says that neither features nor price will attract the iPod faithful, but still some have doubted that Zune's pricing will be enough to encourage the iPod faithful to abandon their Apple units. 

Earlier week, the details of the Zune HD's pricing appeared in a leak reported by tech blog Gizmodo. However, Gizmodo's information about the actual "General Availability" (GA) date for the units was off by a week. 

Amazon had put up briefly and prematurely Zune HD pre-order page that displayed the pricing, earlier this week. But was quickly removed before Gizmodo grabbed a screen capture. Later, Gizmodo also acquired screen shots purportedly from within Best Buy that showed what turned out to be the incorrect GA date. Moreover, there were no comments by the Micrsoft spokesperson.

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Posted by Naresh Koshti on 18 August, 2009 12:08:36 PM IST #