iPod Has Nothing To Fear From Slow-Starting Zune

narramissic writes, "Looks like Apple's iPod has nothing to fear from Zune this holiday season. In a research note published Tuesday, PiperJaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster writes that 'during its launch week on Nov. 16, Zune held the seventh spot on online retailer Amazon.com's top 10 best-selling MP3 players list, and it fell from that spot to 13 on the list only five days after launch, on Nov. 20.' Even worse, only 8% of retailers surveyed by PiperJaffray recommend the Zune to customers, while 75% recommend Apple's iPod." The article notes Apple's 5-year headstart in the portable player market and Microsoft's stated intention to invest heavily in the Zune over the next several years.

Comments

Honestly

[MiKM]

Did anybody seriously expect the Zune to gain a lot of market share?

Re:Maybe

[ZachPruckowski]

Don't kid yourself. It might have sold better in the FOSS-supporting Windows market, but that's not a huge market. The Zune would have been helped by having PlaysForSure compatibility, and Linux/Mac compatibility. Ogg is going to be at best 1% of the market, and it's going to be the 1% least likely to buy anything Microsoft.

Re:iPod historical sales figures

[Smallest]

part of that long ramp-up is the simple fact that it took time for people to catch on to the idea of a portable MP3 player - from any manufacturer. Zune doesn't have that particular problem; the market is well-established.