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Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp said the company plans to issue the update sometime in the middle of this month. He said the downloadable update will also offer other performance improvements but no major feature updates to the player, which debuted in November.

He added that the update will also "improve overall software reliability and efficiency".

Reindorp said the Zune held its number two spot in hard drive-based digital music players in January, citing NPD numbers that give Microsoft 9.9 per cent of the market. The company still trails Apple's iPod in the hard drive-based music area and does not yet have a flash-based device to compete with the iPod Nano or Shuffle.

Reindorp added: "We believe this toehold in the market will enable us to make a deeper footprint as time goes on and we're committed to expanding the Zune offering."

He declined to say when the company might add more devices or start selling video content, adding that Redmond is focused on making the music experience on the current device the best it can be.