Microsoft Zune HD Media Player Refresh Coming Early 2011? [Rumors Suggest Microsoft's Zune HD Portable Media Player Will Get Updated To Include ARM CPU, Windows Phone 7 Inspired OS]

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If you check out prety much any technologically focused media outlet you’ll notice that much of the news surrounds one of two things; smart phones and tablets. This shouldn’t come as a surprise seeing how the mobile craze is upon us and hardware manufacturers far and wide are coming forth to announce their own entries into the respective markets.

However, it doesn’t take a rocket scientiest to realize that these two devices aren’t the only markets within electronics as many other devices are announced just about every day. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention today you’ll know that Apple just recently held a press conference almost entirely focused their iPod portable media player line up. That’s how you know it’s serious business.

While these new devices from Apple are amazing (depending on who you ask) there are still very capable competitors currently on the market. The Zune HD, for one, has generally been regarded by many to be just as good as previous generation iPod touch models.

Although, now that new hardware has been announced and the Zune HD’s original introduction is nearing its one year anniversary, it’s necessary for Microsoft to push out an update in order to retain their small yet stable share of the MP3 player market.

If you’re not familiar with the original Zune HD it feautures a 3.3-inch OLED touchscreen display with a 480 x 272 resolution, an NVIDIA Tegra APX 2600 processor, WiFi and even HDMI out. All pretty highly sought after features.

Today, we have reports that Microsoft is already hard at work on a Zune HD refresh set to compete with the recently announced iPod touch models. Unfortunately, the reports don’t come with much more information passed rumors that it will feature an ARM processor and a Windows Phone 7 inspirired operating system.

Luckily, they do say that the device will be out in early 2011 which, if true, means we don’t have terribly long to wait until we find out for ourselves.