Zune Sales Not So Bad After All

pyrbrand writes "Despite the iFanboy jabber that Zune sales were horrific, CNN has a story to the contrary. Turns out Zune was the #2 Digital Audio player in its first week of sales. Not a bad start for the challenger to the iPod throne. As others have pointed out the Amazon sales rank may have been thrown off by Zune sales being divided between the three colors."

Comments

Re:divided sales

[soft_guy]

Aren't the sales for ipods also divided between all the various models and colors?
 
  Yes - every SKU that is different is a different product. So, for example, the red nano is one product. The black nano is another product. The black and white 30GB video iPod are two products. And so on.

Re:I thought I would point out

[Guanine]

You must have read Mr. Gruber's thoughts on these Amazon Zune sales, as he said the exact same thing about the record player.

Re:divided sales

[earnest murderer]

Indeed.

In fact, when I posted this comment there were 10 iPod moddels in the overall top 25 (not just electronics) and no Zune. Certainly this changes regularly, but come on... There are even 2 other players in that first page list. The black Zune doesn't even show up until the third page (63). You have to look up the others directly...
Brown 285, and White 484

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=209024&op=Repl y&threshold=3&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=170441 34

The real story here is that someone is buying the brown one. ;P

But seriously, maybe it's selling well, but only if you count the first day sales (and not too many more days) does it compete with an iPod.

Re:What can brown do for you

[YrWrstNtmr]

If you want a decent player, get a Cowon A2, X5, etc. They use Linux and play it all.

Oh please. If I'm buying a music player, there are a few considerations:
Does it sound good?
Is it easy to navigate?
Can I transfer music realtively easily?

I don't give a tiny rats ass whether it's Linux or MS or Apple or some other dude. I don't care. And the unwashed masses buying these things care even less than I do.

Amazon sales figures DID match

[SuperKendall]

The first week, the Zune was indeed in the top ten at Amazon - it's only after that the sales dropped like a rock to the current place below 50th. So what the article is saying is not inconsistent with what was observed from Amazon sales rank.

So the article is only telling us what we already knew from reviewing Amazon sales - sales were good the first week, when the media blitz worked but before word of mouth cooled opinion.

It didn't

[SuperKendall]

After the first week boost, the Zune feel rapidly while the Sandisk stayed where it was - right in the middle of the iPods in the top fifteen or so MP3 players.

Hypocrite

[NineNine]

You won't comment on this "totally unbiased" article, but you have no problem commenting on another "totally unbiased" article called "How iPods Took Over the World", huh? Why is that?

Re:divided sales

[Crunchie Frog]

"The real story here is that someone is buying the brown one. ;P"

Camoflage when the drop down an airliner's toilet?Nice reference, and heres that story again

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jses sionid=32DA4C09BEB07855088A6F20EBB8C4DE?topicId=11 211166&sid=1

Re:I don't know why people want it to fail so badl

[admactanium]

Yes, I agree. The equivalent iPod is now $50 cheaper thanks to the Zune. I also think that indicates that Apple considers the Zune to be a far greater threat than their fanboys will admit, or Apple would not need to drop the price to remain competitive.

that would be an interesting point if it weren't completely wrong. apple dropped the price of the ipods before microsoft even announced the price structure for the zune. in fact, microsoft had to delay the announcement of the zune's price so they could have an internal meeting to decide how to react to the price drop of the equivalent ipod. the 30Gb iPod has been $249 for about a month and a half and the zune was just released last week.

Reports be damned

[eWarz]

My day job has me working retail, and I'll have to say that the iPods are running circles around the zune. We've sold 1 zune since the first shipment came in and we've already gone through about 40 ipods. I DON'T think Apple has anything to worry about.

Re:I thought I would point out

[Khazunga]

NO, it's not. Warmer means the entire wave is present, not just a sample of it.

Light reading for when you wish to learn more and stop babbling stupid stuff: Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. When reading, keep in mind that it is a theorem, not a theory. For all practical matters, it is mathematically proven, and states that: "Exact reconstruction of a continuous-time baseband signal from its samples is possible if the signal is band limited and the sampling frequency is greater than twice the signal bandwidth."

I'll add it is not only possible, but in practice extremely easy for the [0-20Khz] range, given the current state of electronics.

Re:divided sales

[kzinti]

"For all we know, the numbers are 70% Apple, 9% Zune, 8.99% SanDisk."

You're close. According to this Seattle PI article, in unit sales it was iPod 63%, Zune 9%. In dollar share, it was iPod 72%, Zune 13%. No numbers are given for Sandisk.