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Zune Sales Continue to Weaken
Dak RIT writes "Market share data for the first month of Microsoft's Zune sales is now available, and appears to confirm that after the initial hype, sales have fallen off dramatically. Microsoft came in fourth for sales during the month of November with only 1.9% of the market. Apple remained unchanged at 62.2%, and SanDisk even managed to increase to 18.4% (looks like the Zune might not even be able to compete with the rest of the market, let alone the iPod). The one surprise though is that the brown Zune is apparently not only being bought, but more popular than the white model."
I (and others) looking for proper use of wifi, have already bought an Archos (604Wifi). Opera browser, network share browsing, etc. Squirting? Please. It's more expensive, but a far superior product at this point.
"what does an IPOD have (other than after market accessories) that the Zune does not?"
Third party software support.
Support for Mac, Windows 2000 and Vista.
Less restrictive DRM.
Ability to hook it into most cars and display track info on the dashboard.
Better resale.
The Zune might make sense at $130. But of course, then it would compete with the Sansa players which appear to be designed by someone not from the Soviet Politboro (Zune's brown color is widely called "Soviet Brown" in the trade and consumer press).
Zune has squirting, iPod doesn't. Zune has a subscription service on their music store. iPod has a larger music store that also includes video podcasts, TV shows, and movies. iPod has toys like the calendar, notepad, and some games. Zune has a built-in FM radio receiver. iPod has the click wheel (which probably looks like a small thing to most people, but having used both an iPod and a music player without one with my rather large music library, to me it is absolutely the most important distinction).
But you really shouldn't just compare the iPod to the Zune. Right now if I were looking for a new music player I'd be paying some serious attention to what Creative is selling.
The 30GB iPod takes up 31% less volume than the Zune and 42% less volume than the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
The 30GB iPod has 15% less mass than both the Zune and the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
The 80GB iPod has 167% more storage space than the Zune and takes up 12% less volume than the Zune.
The 80GB iPod has 33% more storage space, takes up 38% less volume, and has 12% less mass than the 60GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
The 80GB iPod has 167% more storage space, takes up 26% less volume, and has 4% less mass than even the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
No one makes an MP3 player comparable to the iPod in the capacity/form factor department. Same goes for the Nano. iPod owns the market because Apple has no real competition.
The hardware of the unit is ok, but the sound quality is pretty sad. It's worse than my Dell DJ gen 1, which is based off the Creative Zen line. There's no customizable EQ. The interface is decent, but they really dropped the ball with the SQ. How do you mess that up? I'm no audiophile and my best canalphones aren't even that expensive relatively, and I can hear the sound difference vs. the Creative Zen hardware in my Dell DJ. Plus, the unit is a little fat relative to an iPod, and only 30GB of capacity. I dunno about you guys, but I have more than 30GB of music. The lack of an in-line optional remote is also annoying. The RDS feature for FM was interesting, but it seems to take a while to populate the text and it often gets corrupted. I don't know if this is an RDS issue or a problem with the Zune implementation. The Wifi, is of course a DRM'd useless joke that just makes the player weigh more. Bluetooth stereo headphone support would've been far more useful.
The software on the PC is the real killer. It's not iTunes. In fact, it sucks. It crashes quite often, has poor format support, is slow (seriously, just scrolling through music chugs). I don't like iTunes much, in fact I'm a folder/WinAmp man, but iTunes is pretty good compared to the suck that is the Zune software. The features to get missing song tag info also don't work very well. Seriously, if a file is named "Artist - Song.mp3" it doesn't take Hal 9000 to deduce that might be a good place to start looking for MP3 tag information. Speaking of which, the lack of support for a folder-based navigation system bothers me in general. That aside, the software is a bloated, slow, buggy mess.
Is it worth $90? Maybe. Is it worth $250? Not even close. The software sucks, the player's a fatty with mediocre sound quality, and even if the iPod did not exist I'd rather have a Creative or Samsung player. Bad design, and bad implementation. It's aggravating and annoying to use, and doesn't play the formats I use. Rio once had a player called "Karma". I think that's a more fitting title than "Zune" for what's happening here. Supposedly the odds of getting one on Amazon.com for $90 were 122:1 or something. In my crystal ball I see those odds decreasing in the future, unless Microsoft learns how to write efficient, stable, interoperable code. (hah)