It is official, Microsoft has confirmed that it doesn’t have plans to make any new Zune players. In an announcement on the Zune support site, Redmond said it won’t kill the service so if you by any chance have Zune HD player and live in US or Canada, the music subscription service will remain alive for the time being.

The future of Microsoft’s mobile music strategy revolves around the Windows Phone platform and with increasingly prolific smartphones very few people are going for a big screen MP3 player as just about any smartphone you can buy today can play both music and video.

Most iPhone users don’t buy iPods anymore as iPhone 4 is great for listening, but not uploading music unless you buy all your content exclusively from Apple. Android and Windows Phone are also pretty good platforms for media playback, so standalone players are simply not as popular as they used to be.

This is the end of the road for Microsoft’s ill-fated Zune adventure. They tried it, and it didn’t create any serious ripple in the market, and now it’s time to finally say goodbye. If you like your Zune HD so much, Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 feature very similar software to what you are used to on Zune, so you won’t miss much. Let’s hope Microsoft’s Windows 8 Phone can come a step closer to its Windows 8 PC / tablet edition as the capability to have all your devices on one platform will definitely start to look interesting for many.

You can get more details here.