Zune Pass & Marketplace Content Coming To Canada (Some of it anyway)

For some of those who were looking (in Canada) for a viable alternative to Apple's iPods and iTunes, who bought Microsoft's Zune media player only to find that the online music store, the Zune Marketplace wasn't available outside the United States.  The only sources of legally obtained music was through importing songs from CD's or other online music stores such as puretracks.com that sell songs as regular .mp3 files without the restrictions imposed by digital rights management.  Microsoft later introduced a music by subscription service called Zune Pass, again only available in the United States.  It was not long after that Microsoft pulled the Zune players from the Canadian market. 

It has finally come to pass that Zune Pass and Marketplace content will be available outside the United States.  Just about all Zune content will be available across Europe, Zune Pass Music Subscription will not be available in Germany.  Canada, Australia & New Zealand  will get video rentals and purchases but no music.  Looking on zune.ca shows that Microsoft is using Zune as a service for video rental and purchase on the Xbox 360.  There is very little mentioned about the portable media players.  Even then, wouldn't Zune Marketplace customers also want to buy the songs as well, without having to deal with a third party online music store?  Some analysts no longer consider Microsoft to be a leading edge technology company, I wonder why?