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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."
That a RECORD PLAYER is over a dozen places higher in the list than the top selling Zune.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
They haven't accounted for returns though ;-)
Personally I believe the WiFi feature will be a difference-maker, but as currently implemented on the Zune it isn't very enticing. I expect MS to come out with a software update in 6 months or so that will dramatically improve the wireless functionality. I used the early Smartphones and they had similar rough edges - they were clunky and missing many "obvious" features. But MS kept plugging along and now they have a very competitive phone operating system. With their resources and long-term view I figure they will ultimately make the Zune a formidible competitor to the iPod franchise. We also should remember that it's still early yet in this game. Portable media players only last about 3-4 years, so we haven't even really seen the first big replacement wave yet.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
"Despite the iFanboy jabber"
Did anybody else stop reading after that?
Disagree with me? Tell me why, but follow these rules.
Since the numbers are from big box retailers only, they are pretty skewed. No online (no store.apple.com, Amazon, etc), probably not Apple's retail stores either.
Considering the initial curiosity factor and Microsoft employees, I would have expected the initial uptake to have a bigger impact than even this. If they are starting at this low of a baseline... lets just say Creative and SanDisk probably don't have much to worry about.
Indeed.
l y&threshold=3&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=170441 34
;P
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=Rep
The real story here is that someone is buying the brown one.
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.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Damn, post *then* drink.
5 1549011/ref=pd_ts_pg_1/103-5417193-5657455?ie=UTF8 &pg=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Apple's music store has DRM, but there isn't any anywhere else. The Zune adds DRM to your un-DRMed songs for you. Plus the music industry royalty, that they're now pressuring Apple to add. Seems like a definite step backward.
"The real story here is that someone is buying the brown one. ;P"
Camoflage when the drop down an airliner's toilet?
I've seen a lot of Zune ads. None of them mention Microsoft at all. Anywhere. I wonder if this is MS admitting that they have no mindshare. Or maybe the "cool" factor doesn't go with their corporate logo.
There is a very simple reason to both avoid purchase of the Zune and pray to 42 that it fails. For every Zune sale, the record industry gets a cut. If you buy a Zune, you are propping up the RIAA. You are essentially paying a tax that assumes you are guilty of copyright infringement before you've even committed it (and of course you could get still get sued by the RIAA even after paying the absurd tax). This should sound familiar to Canadians.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
While I agree in principle with you, iPods are designed to be used as portable audio players. Being able to use them as an external drive is a bonus, not an advertised feature. On the other hand, the blank CD tax in Canada is truly unfair, because blank media is designed to be used in a large number of ways, NOT just audio. I think of the last 200 CDs I've burned, about five were audio (and MP3 CDs at that, which is a data disc on a technicality). Since finding that old cassette adapter that I plug into my iPod, I've had no need for audio CDs.
And for the sake of Devil's Advocate, you should (by the industry's logic) be forced to pay a royalty for using your iPod as a portable drive for your camera. Not for the music, but for the painfully high chance that you've snapped a shot that included something copyrighted... basically anything with a backdrop other than a landscape (ads plastered everywhere, any branded products, etc). Just like the painfully high chance you infringed copyright of (not stole... they still have their copy!) music, right?
Don't get me wrong. The idea sucks, and is downright offensive to almost everyone who actually buys music. But a piracy tax on iPods DOES make more sense than blank media taxes, simply due to intended use. As far as I'm concerned, Apple shouldn't have to pay them a cent as long as they keep the "Don't steal music." sticker on the front (nor should any other brand). As far as I'm concerned, such a tax legitimizes piracy - a Slashdot post I read earlier today indicated that this logic held up in Canadian court. I'd be all for the idea if I didn't know that the logic couldn't possibly hold up in a court system as screwed up as our (US) own.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Microsoft didn't "cave" to Universal. To "cave" implies resistance. Microsoft and Universal have always been on the same page.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They're also missing the fact that a lot of clueless parents are going to be buying these for their kids for xmas and then are going to be returning them AFTER xmas for an iPod.
Shadus
Also, that's just one company's data. The article goes on to say, "Another research agency, Current Analysis, reported a somewhat similar sales reading during the same week. For the same week ending November 18, 2006, the Zune took 7 percent of the MP3 player market, falling behind both Apple and Sandisk.". So other statistics suggest that the Zune may only have been able to hit the #3 spot in the first week of sales. Again, this is going up against models that have been out for some time.
But the really important thing to keep in mind is who we're dealing with and their original goal. These would be good sales for a new company, but for an established behemoth with the clout of Microsoft, and given their goal of producing an "iPod killer", this is a pretty lame showing. If anybody is being fanboyish here, it's people who are saying that not doing quite as horrifically awful as people predicted is some kind of victory for Microsoft. Not to say that you can count Microsoft out; they'll doubtless release improved versions. But first impressions count for a lot, as Apple learned that the hard way with Newton. Although Apple eventually produced a good PDA, the Newton never recovered from the bad press and bad reviews that the initial, not-ready-for-prime-time models received.
[...]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.
Yes, but this isn't the main way in how the report was misleading. The main problem is that TFA mentions (according to one analysis) 2nd place for the Zune, with 9% of the market, which places it before SanDisk and after Apple. Yet no numbers are given for Sandisk or Apple. For all we know, the numbers are 70% Apple, 9% Zune, 8.99% SanDisk. According to the other analysis, Zune had 7%, putting it behind SanDisk, which supports the theory that their market shares are very close.
In addition, we don't know who the 7-9% was taken out of. If all of it came out of Apple's share, that is one thing, but if it came out of Microsoft's former PlaysForSure partners, mainly SanDisk, then it is another. TFA simply does not go into any detail here.
So, TFA has nothing to dispute the theory, mentioned many times in the past on Slashdot, that the Zune will indeed be a 'killer', but mainly a PlaysForSure-killer, not an iPod-killer. On the contrary, that theory seems to be partially borne out by TFA and the blanks it doesn't fill in.
IMO, in the short term the non-iPod market will be much simpler to encroach on than the iPod one. Yet, given time and Microsoft's endless pockets, we eventually see a change in the long run.