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A Million Zunes Sold
According to Robbie Bach, Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, Zune has already met the goal of 1.000.000 players sold, set at launch for the end of June. He also confirms that new Zune things will come in this fall, talks (not) about the Zune Phone, the new Watermelon Red Zune, the Zune Marketplace and of course Xbox 360.
...and don't forget - there's four less iPods in circulation since they put out that 'Bite Me' display unit.
who bought these? i don't know anyone in the uk who has a zune.. for that matter i don't know anyone who has even SEEN a zune. did ms employees buy these at a knock-down rate?
Why UNIX?
I've only been holding off on buying a Zune because of the colour.
Now, at long last, a Watermelon Zune! It's as hip as a watermelon, and twice as easy to use!
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
99 million more, and you'll match where the iPod sales are now.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Has anyone ever been somewhere and seen more than say three in a five minute span?
At my monthly tech meeting we have a gadget show-n-tell, so far no Zunes have shown up. It is strange that MS claims 1,000,000 sold and I do not know anyone who has a Zune... Things that make you go hmmmm.....
I could've said the same thing for the iPod back when they hit their first million. It's still less than 1% of the total US population, let alone the world.
I actually see many Zunes in use in the D.C. area (most of them are used for watching missed episodes of Lost, 24, and Heroes)
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Riddle me this Slashdot: Why is it that when a product achieves ... ...10% of the MP3 player market, it is less than an also-ran. ...10% of the browser market, it is a signal that the world is changing. ...10% of the OS market, it is news that would rival the second coming of Christ.
(Hey, put down that Troll mod -- part-time Linux-based programmer with an iPod here... Really.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I'd hoped that the Zune would be a stronger competitor to the iPod, offering things Apple didn't and raising the bar on portable players generally.
As a fan of Apple, I'm keen to see better players in this space to drive everyone up. It's good to see Microsoft claiming the million players sold, but the Zune as it stands today is a turkey. The innovative wireless sharing has been hobbled by unnecessarily draconian DRM, leaving a weak offering. Maybe Zune 2 will be better, but it's a failure to release a poor first showing, as now we've all got this first impression to overcome.
I'd like to see Microsoft release a really solid Zune. Promises are worth exactly nothing; only products matter.
At least it seems to be selling better than Vista!
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
We all know MSFT counts something as sold the day it leaves the warehouse, not the day it leaves the store.
I know more people with Archos products (2) than Zunes (1).
1,000,000 sold to vendors perhaps? Sold to customers might be different but if there are 1 mil Zunes on shelves or in stock out there M$ can claim "million sold."
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Quoth the article:
"Read the full interview or listen the podcast (available to download also) on San Franscisco Chronicle."
Yeah, you'd think they'd have edited that one out...
--- Nick, hard at work
I guess that's also a running tally of how many people who can't read the cruddy reviews about this thing.
I can see the first few thousand people being blinded by the lies, but why the rest followed them over the cliff is beyond me!
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
If a small player has only 10% of the market and a compelling product, it's a sign of change. If a major player has only 10% of the market and a product with no compelling features, it's a sign of failure.
Except Microsoft wont fail, they'll gain a foothold and then flood the retail channel with their second-rate take on an existing product. With one or two exceptions, that's how they've done things for the past 20 years.
Not fair if you're counting Ballmer buying the first 900,000 units!
The thing is one million may sound like a lot to us, but it is really a drop in the bucket compared to mow many mp3 players there are out there. iPods have sold how many million? I still see more generic players (Sansas etc) around my area than genuine iPods. MS is trying to establish the Zune as a brand which may or may not happen. To do so they will have to sell 10's of millions and then you might see one. MS does have the staying power to wait. If the thing fails, at least they have a tax write-off. In the meantime, the reason they want in is the sheer size of the market. Not unlike the iPhone which Apple figures will make a go of it with single digit market penetration. A million is probably true, but in percentage of the market it is insignificant.
After the iPod amnesty at Microsoft I would imagine they have finally reached this target.
I hate to interrupt this lovely Zune hate-fest (since it became cool to hate on it for no apparent reason) but since when have people considered their own personal experience when dealing with a product to somehow scale up to the reality of it? Every second post says, "I have never seen anyone with them!" Well, of course not, look at what site you're on! It is practically a religion to hate on Microsoft here. I reckon the Zune's market is people who think the iPod is too cool so they buy the Microsoft alternative. Do you think it is surprising that there are Zune booths inside of GameStop?
And I write this as an iPod user. It is my job to make fun of your groupthink, so carry on.
I am reluctant to believe that 1M Zunes were sold through to consumers as opposed to sold to retail. Microsoft pulled this same stunt in December to meet their 10M Xbox 360 goal. They essentially flooded the retail channels with 360s, many of which are still on the shelves today. The question is, how many Zunes did they dump into retail to meet the 1M goal?
> I know more people with Archos products (2) than Zunes (1). That's statistically significant. 1/sqrt(N) is your signal to noise.
Dekker Dreyer
I have to admit, I've been curious to play around with one of these things, but I haven't even seen them in stores here (Halifax, NS) let alone in the hands of one of my friends. Not that I would buy one - my iPod works just fine.
Good point, however its not so much the deviousness of a company but rather the reality of GAAP accounting. The manufacturer counts the sell upon delivery of the product to a wholesaler (Best Buy, CompUSA) and receiving consideration (money) for the sale equals revenue. However, the smart analyst will look at how things flow through the channel (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc.) to ascertain how well things are selling to the consumer because this will be the best indicator of the future.
of course, it's binary
That about sums up my excitement concerning the Zune. I'll stick with my Sansa e280 especially since I can run Rockbox on it.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Don't know about the US or Asia, but here in EU seems that nearly nobody bought it.
Could be nice if they said to whom they sold one million zunes.
Not to me, certainly. When I'll need one I'm going to buy some chinese player which will cost a fraction and, more important, won't be crippled by drm, spyware and a proprietary operating system I don't trust.
I think they also count coupons that offer you a discount to the product as sold. This is what happened with Vista (except discount was 100% if I remember correctly).
It can be simplified further:
* If we like said product/OS, then every tiny gain in market share is major news which is accepted without further questioning of the facts as presented. Comments on article consist of lots of pats on the back and generally positive.
* If we don't like said product/OS, then every tiny gain in market share involves questioning the facts as presented. Insert long diatribes about unfairness of past behavior. You can even make statements that conditionally apply, i.e. "monopolies are bad. Except for the iPod, they earned it!"
The funny part is you have a bunch of posts nitpicking over the 10% mark: "there's no way the Zune has 10%!" Yes, way to miss the entire point of the post.
I've yet to see one this side of the pond, and the statement doesn't say who Microsoft sold them to and and what price. Given they appear to be able to hit the volume just in time for Microsoft's financial year end, how do you spell "write off"? And isn't market share normally measured by what proportion appear to be in the hands of consumers??
Wrong. It's running EMBEDDED Microsoft software -- here, the `reset' button is king.
-1 not first post
Microsoft product managers remind me of the Soviet factory managers in that they both had fixed, set quotas to meet, which were set by leaders/upper management who were/are totally divorced from the reality of just how unpopular Microsoft as a brand is, and the reasons behind that unpopularity are because it's been a long time since Microsoft offered products that didn't have some kind of Designed-By-Marketing trick to lock you into their products.
It shows just how little trust Microsoft actually has in its own products.
it's 1,000,000 patents infringed and 235 Zunes sold
You can't count giving 850,000 away for free as a "sale".
Microsoft does this all the time, They say "see Vista already outsold XP in its first month. (I have only seen 1 person with a Vista system and he hates it.) it's widely addopted.. why dont you have it? your falling behind in REAL technology."
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Microsoft run a Student Partners program (cheap grass roots marketing). You advertise us on campus, we'll give you prizes.
The winner of the award this year was due to get a Zune... however, due to it not being lanuched over here yet, they had to give away a Creative Zen (if I remember rightly). Oops.
"has already met the goal of 1.000.000 players sold, "
So only 1 zune was sold... Great.
Did anyone read the article? Bach is making a prediction that they WILL have sold a million by the end of June. In other words it's just a prediction. Whereas he has to quote existing sales accurately, predicted sales, they they don't sell it by end of June, he'll say, 'well my guess was off'.
"EDIT: The text of the interview says Microsoft has sold already more than 1 million Zunes, but listening to the podcast Robbie Bach says Microsoft will have sold more than this number by the end of this fiscal year, end of June. A small detail."
Even if it's only 10% of the hard disk market segment it's in and 1% of the iPods and about 0.3% of Mp3 players, I still doubt it's sold that many. Man that was a dog.
What is Steve Ballmer's uncle going to do with 1000000 zunes?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The only reason I bought a Zune was because I thought it would have linux on it a few months after launch. I thought to myself "Ipod fans have had Rockbox and ipodlinux for ages so why not Zune?". Big mistake. Microsoft have gone out of their way to prevent third party firmware being loaded on by only accepting Microsoft signed firmware. Its such a shame. Think about what could be done: wireless syncing, actually sharing songs between other Zune users (not that 3 songs in 3 days crap), gapless playback, proper video format support (not just wmv) etc. It could have been good...
These are the three big-name electronics retailers in Canada:
Future Shop
Best Buy
The Source
Not one of them seems to carry it. What's that all about?
In this place I own an ipod nano and almost everyone else owns a sony mp3 player o_O , and I only own an ipod nano because I won it in some contest. 3rd world is funny I guess.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
"EDIT: The text of the interview says Microsoft has sold already more than 1 million Zunes, but listening to the podcast Robbie Bach says Microsoft will have sold more than this number by the end of this fiscal year, end of June. A small detail. "
Reading the article itself you get to figure, they haven't even sold 1million Zunes yet. They plan to sell them by June...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Because the Zune has not achieved 10% of the market. If you read the marketing speak carefully, they said they have achieved 10% of the market in which they compete. The Zune has 2.9% of the MP3 market and ranks #5. They have 10% of the hard drive market only.
they fail to mention what numerical base these numbers are in. for all we know it could be binary! 01000000 = 64 units sold!
you are surrounded by "a few" Microsoft lemmings and the fact that they don't have a Zune says a lot? Among the 50 to 60 thousand employees you quote, I wouldn't think "a few" would be a significant sample size.
I work in tech and I wouldn't buy either an ipod or a zune. I don't see a need to pay more than 25 bucks for something I just need to play music right above the din of traffic and jerks on cell phones, so I have a cheap 1Gig Taiwanese budget player
Also, I've never seen another of my player in the states, so therefore it must have only sold less than, oh I don't know, 10k units?
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Does his 1 million Zunes sold count the devices that were bought and returned within a 30-day period in exchange for an iPod? I personally know of at least a dozen people who have done so.
I just can't believe that someone would actually pay over $200 for this piece of junk. I'd rather buy something from Apple or Samsung than waste two Benjamins and a Grant for something that resembles the design and architecture put in to the XBox 360 power brick.
Oooh, watemelon red! I can't wait...
Considering that the word Zune in Hebrew (zee-yoone) means "having sex", I imagine there are plenty of pimpled teenagers who bought those and the next day ran to the schoolyard and told all their buds that they have had their first intercourse.
You'd think they'd sell better now that they are $229 instead of $249. Every store around me is bundling 2 or 3 free things with them just to get them off the shelves. It's good to see Microsoft passing the buck to retailers.
I've only seen 1 Zune(It was someone from MS's). I didn't think it was a BAD mp3 player. The Zune has a nice (looking) interface. Actually navigating the menus was a chore. You can't just put a circle with 4 buttons underneath on the front of an 'ipod killer'. I remember it being a bit heavy, and it seemed kinda blocky to me. (I have a ipod nano, so most Hard Drive players seem heavy and blocky to me). I wouldn't suggest buying one to anybody I know, but I wouldn't suggest an ipod either. The mp3 player market is wide open and there are TONS of players to choose from.
Microsoft has modest goals with the Zune, like they did with the Xbox. Just getting their feet wet in a new market is what they are interested in.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot and you're bashing Microsoft. That does pass for insightful around here these days...
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
And I can tell you based on our store, which is in a very large college town, IPods and other brands (Sansa, Creative, Samsung, Sony, etc) sell much better than the Zune. Honestly, I can't remember the last time we even sold a Zune. I may just have to go do some research to find out when the last zune was sold, but I know there hasn't been any sold in the last 3 or 4 months, wereas IPods and the others sell atleast a few every day.
Anecdotal evidence != very reliable data. Here's another piece of anecdotal evidence: I use Vista myself and love it. I know three persons with Vista, and they like it too -- especially the integrated instant search, and Aero.
Before he bought Vista, I tried giving Ubuntu 6.10 to one of them and he didn't like it at all. Several of his devices, including his wifi, didn't work. Several things (like hibernate) were horribly broken in my install of Ubuntu as well, enough for me to stop using it completely. Do I go out and say that Ubuntu is a failure? No. I just accept that I don't have the time and patience to set it up, and would rather spend money on an OS that starts working within an hour. (The Vista installation is goddamn fast.)
First of all, just because you personally don't know anyone who has a Zune doesn't mean that lots of people don't have one. Maybe you just don't hang out with the type of people who would buy a Zune which is likely considering your comment.
Secondly, a lot of people will buy whatever new gadget is on the market whether they need it or not and I'm sure that's a big contributor.
And I say this as someone who has no intention of buying a Zune and as a major Apple supporter.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Check the UID and comment count of the "user" that submitted this story.
I don't think Zunes have been launched in the UK yet, which is probably why you haven't seen one. (I might be wrong on that one).
May 27th, 2007
Received a shit-brown piece of electronic in the mail, how drunk was I?
May 28th, 2007
Made a homepage called www.squirtme.com in an effort to meet other Zune-owners so I can test the Zunes squirt-feature. Already lots of visitors.
May 29th, 2007
Received a take-down notice from my ISP due to extreme bandwidth usage and trafficking of indecent material. Who are these people?
May 30th, 2007
The Zune has wrapped all my music in DRM, I'm empoverished due to bandwidth traffic, and my local community thinks I'm a perv.
May 31st, 2007
I can't take it anymore, I'll end my own life by choking on my Zune, people will think I suffocated in feces when they perform the autopsy, cool!
Since we have no real way to verify the 1M figure, I at least would like to post as a Zune owner and put in my 2 cents.
.wmv. If you convert directly to .wmv your audio is going to sound like crap.
And please turn off the automatic troll sensor - this isn't a troll.
First - a few websites dedicated to the Zune - use your own judgement as to their veracity as indicators of whatever popularity the Zune may have:
ZuneInsider http://zuneinsider.com/Default.aspx/
ZuneCorps http://zunecorps.com/
ZuneSphere http://www.zunesphere.com/
Wired Zune http://wiredzune.com/
Zunerama http://zunerama.com/
Zuney http://www.zuney.net/cmps_index.php/
Ok, enough of that - ZuneInsider has a decent listing of other links.
So - I'm a Zune owner. What's the deal? Why'd I buy one?
Nearly all the links above have a section or Blog with hacks. The Hard Drive hack and the Wi-Fi hack work as noted. I have a circle of friends at work who have Zunes and we can share non-DRM'd music, files, pics, etc., etc. Works very well.
I'm NOT a huge fan of WMV format. I'm a video junkie and your best bet in converting XVid/DivX, DVD, what have you, is to use of the available converters and create a standard iPod-compatible Mpeg4 and let the extremely trite and crappy Zune software convert it
That said - Video is sweet on the Zune once its converted.
Zune gets BIG points in my book for Audio. Its on par with the 3rd Gen iPod. Not sure what Apple was thinking for its 4th and 5th gen iPods but I never liked the sound quality that well.
By the way - you'll get my 3rd gen iPod when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Get on Ebay and buy one - I can nearly guarantee you that they'll be version number to collect.
DRM? Most of you know what Tunebite is and it works on anything from the Apple and Zune stores. Bye bye DRM. And of course you can load all your existing non-DRM'd music on the Zune as well.
Album Art - not as slick as the upcoming 6th gen iPod but full screen.
Navigation - not as bad as you think. Another point in its favor, honestly and I prefer it over the iPod.
FM Radio - onboard FM is better than any of the solutions I borrowed or bought for the iPod. It uses RDS and a very, very cool display. I'm a HAM, SWL'r, AM and FM BCB DX'r and this is a nice little radio for its antenna limitations.
CASE: Worst aspect of the iPod is how easy it gets scratched, be it the metal bezel or the front cover. The Zune case is a nice feeling rubber product that I've yet to scratch or fail to clean with a soft cloth. The screen is polycarbonite like the iPod and should you scratch it, it cleans up very well with the numerous iPod scratch repair kits out on the market.
I could go on but I'm not trying to convince you to buy one. Just letting you know that there is definitely a Zune fan base out there and we are extremely happy people. We understand the Zune's (many) limitations and lack of software but its few good points are really, really good points.
I imagine the Zune will get more popular when you can connect one to Ubuntu or a Mac.
See ya's,
DXMikey
HD Radio is a big fat LIE
...and 5 satisfied customers!
was that 990,000 of these were sold to Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices Division
I sorry Northern California maybe small in population but I see iPods all the time, I have never seen a zune. Weird.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
You would think that the engineers behind the Zune would have realized that the concept of sharing (i.e. squirting) music via Zunes is fundamentally in contradiction to everything that their music suppliers (the RIAA) stand for and would ultimately result in total failure.
The zune was doomed from the beginning thanks to: a plethora of crappy DRM technology (aka Digital Consumer Enablement lol?), recursively crippling software and a total lack of popular interest (cant find article to story where Circuit City employee advises customer against buying Zune).
Come on Bach...come onnnnnnnnn. take a hint and buy some round wheels for your bandwagon before you try to get everyone to jump on it
Who does Microsoft sell to? That is the question. Have you been in a Microsoft store lately? Microsoft sells to retailers. How many Zunes are in retailers wareshouses awaiting retail sale? I bet the sales guy gets a pretty good spiff for selling a Zune over a Zen.
My daughter away in school wanted a Xen Video. We went to a retailer and asked for one. The salesman convienently heard me say Zune. They acted like they didn't know what or where the Zen's were. Either I got a real diwit for a salesman, or they were blinded by the possible spiff for selling a Zune. The store did have Zen's, but were sold out of the video model.
The truth shall set you free!
"Well that was pretty stupid of you. If you would've ripped the music in MP3 format you could listen to it on nearly anything. The only people that use Ogg Vorbis are open source fanatics."
That's a pretty stupid thing to say. It sounds better than MP3 and its legal to play on my operating system of choice, it also works fine on my audio player of choice. All it shows is a limitation of the ipod. All that matters to me is that my collection of music is in the best format for me, I couldn't really give a toss that your favourite format is MP3. For me Ogg Vorbis was the sensible choice. Whatever happened to the concept of personal choice?
Nothing at all happened to the concept of personal choice. But the original poster is still correct. Show me ten people who know about, care about, and prefer to use Ogg Vorbis and I'll show you at least nine, and probably ten, open source fans. And he's also correct in saying that if you had ripped the music to MP3 you could listen to it on practically anything.
Let's see...Zune released last November, a million sold by May...YES! There IS a sucker born every minute!
blah blah blah
Ummm.. "In the UK, if a million were sold there you'd have a 1/54 chance [or so] of knowing someone who owned a Zune. In Canada, it'd be about 1/32 or so."
:-). Hence bringing the odds to almost 1/4.
It seems to me that some people actually have more than one acquaintance! Well, also the topology of acquaintance probably doesn't form a ring either, but that's a lesser quibble.
So if 1/54 people in UK had a Zune, presumably each of them would know *several* people: heck, they might even encounter as many as a dozen people in the course of their daily lives
In any case, the Microsoft-shill unquestionably lies about the numbers, so I'm sure it's not 1M sold. But let's still keep basic arithmetic a little more on track.
Buy Text Processing in Python
Nothing at all happened to the concept of personal choice. But the original poster is still correct. Show me ten people who know about, care about, and prefer to use Ogg Vorbis and I'll show you at least nine, and probably ten, open source fans. And he's also correct in saying that if you had ripped the music to MP3 you could listen to it on practically anything.
What's with all the Vorbis bashing on slashdot these days? It's a superior codec than MP3, unencumbered by patents, absolutely free to use, and is supported by several brands of music players. The only real reason I can see to not like Vorbis is that Apple does not like Vorbis, and that's a stupid reason if you ask me.
Explain how I bashed Vorbis. I'd really like to know. I said nothing about it as a codec.
Beside, unless you've got killer headphones I'd be very surprised if you could detect much difference between a 160kbps mp3 file and a Vorbis-encoded one. For portable players they're both fine.
Of course this all depends on if you can believe a fanboy site.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Does "1 million sold" mean that 1 million units were shipped out the doors to retailers or does it mean that 1 million units were reported sold directly to customers?
The URL in the summary has been slashdotted (surprise).
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Looks like quite a few of you skipped church on Sunday, because the Microsoft groupthink has been split down two separate veins of baseless conjecture today:
1) 1 million Zunes sold is a drop in the bucket. A DROP IN THE BUCKET I SAY!
Yeah, and this story wasn't about the Zunes market dominance - it was about a MS official stating they met their internal targets of 1 mllion by the end of June. But good lord, for every anecdotal story you have of not knowing anyone who owns a Zune (statistically likely since they have only sold a million units), there is someone else who does. I personally have one friend who owns one, and he seems to enjoy it.
2) Microsoft obviously fudged the numbers! The Zune is crappy, there is no way!
A lot of you are making jokes about how they massaged this number, or how it's probably a million units shipped to retail, but you have nothing to back this up at all, just like you didn't with the Vista license sales stories. Just baseless conjecture sprouting from the basic Microsoft == Evil truism. If they somehow admit to faking the numbers, then string them up accordingly.
Honestly though - take a scroll through all of the comments in this story, and you will cringe. And this is coming from someone who is a happy 3rd Gen iPod owner, and who isn't interested in the Zune in the slightest.
Don't buy their product if it doesn't have what you want, but all of this foaming at the mouth hatred for everything they do or release seriously hamstrings your credibility.
- Scott
Could someone link me to a pic of what a "Zune" looks like? ;P
This is a subtle point that adjusts end of quarter shipping policies for a lot of international companies.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I agreed with you until you wrote that they have a right to "spread the word." We are not talking about life-changing matters, we are discussing ways to waste our personal income on things to appease our own sensory desires.
I'm not advocating some asinine political correctness where we don't say bad things about anything for fearing of offending someone. I am advocating an end to this childish "us vs. them" mentality that seems to pervade this site. I really can't understand why people can't tolerate others using technology that they wouldn't use. It is a sort of technological arrogance to presume that your choice in the matter is always suitable for every need. And then, in an attempt to make it more important than it really is, the matter is turned into a moral issue and made far too important. This juvenile notion of "use what I use" demands to be mocked at every turn.
Technology doesn't need advocates. Good technology speaks for itself. Don't become a tool just because you like your toolset. (Sorry, had to.)
In late February Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.52B patent infringement suit against Microsoft over 2 patents which cover something in MP3 (neither is included in the Frauenhofer license which Microsoft paid for). Microsoft may get this reduced or overturned. But don't let a Microsoft "victory" fool you: the structure of patent law doesn't allow for the safety you speak of; that structure is designed to create the ambiguity which places all software users and developers in jeopardy (be it the jeopardy of being sued, losing the exclusivity patents ostensibly create, or the jeopardy of losing a patent infringement lawsuit). I remain unconvinced that delivering the ability to use most popular free software codecs is any more risky than MP3.
In an interview with Wired magazine IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian claims Alcatel-Lucent should have dealings only with Frauenhofer but I think she mainly says this because she's speaking for the desires of businesses distributing MP3 players, not the realities of patents. That one-stop MP3 license shopping would make businesses comfortable dealing with software patents. But Apple, another major MP3 licensee, knows all too well the danger to their customers if a patent holder isn't properly paid off (or their patents avoided entirely). Richard Stallman tells the story of Paul Heckel's patents when Heckel's lawyer told him his patents may have covered something in Apple's Hypercard:
As more MP3-related patent holders come out of the shadows, more companies risk being similarly exposed as organizations that don't do all the research they need to do to resolve these issues (and such research is impossible to completely do). This places their users at risk. Any such patent holder could have Apple over a barrel just like Heckel did. While this could certainly happen for any kind of program we know that the known patent holders of ideas implemented in free codecs aren't charging anyone for any use, even commercial use.
Digital Citizen
Just to put some perspective of the distance between them, there have been 100,000,000 iPods sold.
I feel so used, his username is "Zune-Online.com". I should have noticed that.
Damn this site.
You separate how many sold THROUGH (to consumers) versus how many were sold IN (to retailers)
MS so often serve up an inferior product backed by huge money and marketing without really understanding the product space.
Look at Windows Mobile (WinCE). I believe this is now making a tiny profit fore MS, but for approx 8or 9 years MS just threw money at WinCE. Companies producing good stuff were driven out of business. This pattern of destructive practice has been played out so many times: Borland, Netware,...
It might not matter if they had a half-decent product range. MS has a history of storming into a new area with little understanding and causing a lot of damage.
Some years back, myself and a three others went to Redmond to meet with a new MS group formed to enter into a new industry. We came from the industry leaders and had approx 25 years of experience between us. We understood very well how to program for the industry. The MS guys had no experience, but the manager dude had spent approx 1 month reading up on the industry. They presented their APIs which we explained would not work and would be close to impossible to program to. The MS manager dude basically said that it did not matter: programmers would do whatever they said. Well the MS APIs got released and were a complete disaster causing pain for many people for a few years.
No bother as to whether they're doing something better, just using their weight to body-slam anyone else.
I see the same thinking with C#, Embedded .NET, Silverlight, Zune,...
Engineering is the art of compromise.
FWIW, I used to work in a retail store that sold zunes and other MP3 players and we never got spiffs for zunes despite the fact that other companies offered stuff like that (Helio Phones always gave a pretty good spiff). Maybe he is just a zune owner and wants to "squirt" your daughter.
My guess is the Pacific Ocean bought about 750,000.
you had me at #!
People in the industry like to break up the market into "hard drive" and "flash" segments.
And then the people at M$ like to just make up a number that sounds big and an excuse for it that sounds good but is wrong. It's called lying.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It probably won't work with my current or next computers (currently Debian; next most likely to be dual boot Mac OS / Kubuntu). And anyway, I have a telephone with a perfectly good MP3 player and USB mass storage. Unfortunately it's a Sony Ericsson; but I reckon I got the last laugh on them anyway since I discovered (in parallel with many others, so I can't take full credit) how to rip off CDs with the Sony Rootkit, on a PC that had already been infected. (*cough* Slax *cough*)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
10% of the market = 10% of the units sold in period (7 months from start of December to end of June). We're talking the hard-disk-based players here, BTW, as per the interview. ... Suddenly, a 10% market share for the Zune selling about 1 million in the same period isn't unrealistic.
Hard drive based players in red cases with the letters E,N,U and Z in the name? Excellent. Some girl in the back makes up all the numbers anyway. How many fingers do you see, Winston?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When's the last time you heard or read of the Zune as opposed to the iPod?
'Nuff said.
Well, maybe not. Just read this in Wikipedia:
"On Monday, April 9, 2007, Apple announced that over 100 million iPods had been sold worldwide"
That puts Microsoft at LESS than one percent of the market (since there are plenty of other makes on the market, as well.)
Another loser product from Microsoft.
How does it feel to have a tiny share of the market, Bill?
Go back to sueing OSS.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If not, why is it on /.?
Why should anyone buy a player that doesn't run Rockbox? www.rockbox.org
Maybe a stick with mp3 build in for 15 bucks. But anything else?
and creative doesnt have restrictive drm either
They've moved close to a million units.
Where to? Putting them on store shelves is nothing more than supply chain squeezing. Sooner or later, they are going to end up in a landfill like thousands of Lisas did. You should be able to put them in a much smaller space than the Lisa, so M$ will have beaten Apple in one small way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Best case scenario, they have a million in the channel by June 30. Heck maybe they have that now.
As for the putative Zune defenders, yes, it gets slagged because it's from Microsoft, because it's chock full of the indicators of the DRMed to death world of locked down digital entertainment Microsoft would visit upon us in a heartbeat. If you don't understand why that alone is reason to distrust and even openly dislike Microsoft consumer products on principle, it's a wonder you are even in here.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
I was just thinking, wouldn't it be a neat hollow swap trick for MS to buy a heap of them themselves, then recycle them for sales? They need volume for it to be credible, and it won't sell until it's credible (and it isn't, but I digress). Maybe 50% f them are filling up landfill sites somewhere because I have yet to se one other than in a shop.
:-)
Or maybe I just live in a good neighborhood
I guess we can call this first million units sold the beginning of the Big Brownout...
given that ipod has sold 100 million -- they have a long way to catch up...
j
Windows Media player changed all the tags on my songs and mangled my library. I'm still going through it and tagging everything over. Thanks Microsoft, you make terrible software.
Now.. Itunes on vista, is a pile of shit, and Apple better code up a 64bit version or i will shit on my ipod and mail it to them
Everyone I know has an ipod. Almost everyone I know has more than one I pod, and has certainly owned more than one model. It's not a status symbol. You just are issued a standard ipod in suburbia nowadays, and in every age bracket too. I keep physics lectures on mine, and audio books, as well as tunes stolen from the internet (snicker). The zune tried to enter a market where they didnt need to be, and came in with a less than stellar offering. It's like competing with J&J on Kleenex.
Just kidding. My mp3 player is a Samsung YP-U2J. I prefer it over the iPod because...
It's the size of a flash drive and charges as such.
Although browsing for a particular song in a large library can be a pain without a click wheel, I rarely do that because I keep the device on shuffle mode.
It has an FM tuner, which I used all the time back when my library only consisted of 5 ripped CD's.
It has 2GB, which is plenty of storage for music.
It doesn't store pictures or video, but I don't need a portable device for that. I have a computer.
It's only $100. The iPod nano is the only member of the iPod family that comes close and it's $150, with no FM tuner.
But that's just me. If I had more money, I would have probably gotten an iPod. I wouldn't now though, because I'd rather have a world outside of iTunes. Just my various rambling for today...
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
They threatened/bribed wholesalers into buying them en masse. There are a ton of them at most of the stores I go to.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I work in a school, and what the kids carry around in their backpacks is a pretty good indicator of the general popularity of the product.
So far, most popular things I see in kids hands are iPods, PSPs (the little kids have Nintendo DS lites) and every type of cell phone on the planet.
This year, I only saw one kid with a Zune. She said she was sorry she bought it since all the accessories she wanted to buy only worked with iPod.
So if kids (or their parents) aren't buying Zune, who is?
-ted
Maybe he is just a zune owner and wants to "squirt" your daughter.
His Zune has to have real long range. She is away at school.
The truth shall set you free!
First, you don't see 300 people each day for very long. So you first need to calculate the liklihood that someone will actually use their MP3 player during the small window where they're in your sight.
Second, you have to distribute the Zunes fairly evenly across at least 1.5 billion "first worlders" in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
One would either have to make a lot of assumptions or do a lot of research to do the actual math, but I have no problem saying publicly that it's nowhere near a "certainty" that you'd see a Zune "before a few days are out."
The whole notion is a bit laughable, really.
When they make "Lemon" colored units I will buy one, as I have no problem carrying one that represents what the product really is.
Spending Resources on Defense leaves Less to defend.
Nokia recently announced that they've sold 100 million S60 phones. OK, I don't *know* they can all play mp3s, but I'll bet a huge proportion of them can.
Max.
This is sort of too little too late. Ipod has caught on like Kleenex brand. I don't think they are going to take back any fraction of this market!
You quote NDP numbers that show M$ is "on track" to break a million, but the article summary has...
According to Robbie Bach, Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, Zune has already met the goal of 1.000.000 players sold,
So Mr. Bach is puffing up a number and then claims this is 10% of "the category," which is also misleading. Apple has sold over 100,000,000 iPods and are currently selling something goofey like 10,000,000 a quarter. When you consider that there are many other "hard disk" players that are just as good or better than Zune, there it's unlikely M$ has anything like 10% of any market but the one for Brown Zunes.
You seem very passionate in your feelings about Microsoft. I think there's room on Slashdot for disinterested debate using facts, rather than strictly conjecture. I hope you agree.
I hope you can agree that the numbers you dug up contradict Mr. Bach, that his conjectures are contradicted by facts history and that his company is evil.
I can safely say that Zune will go the way of the Dell Jukebox. It's got second rate construction, third rate battery life, and worst of class digital restrictions. The Dell Jukebox had more to offer in terms of construction and battery life and was less restricted. M$ will start giving them away as promotional items, but neither they nor the WMF rent-a-music deal will ever catch on.
In the mean time, M$ will do everything in their power to hobble the competition. Yes, monopoly abuse makes me angry. It limits all of our choices and makes the world a poorer place than it has to be.
The expected next step is to call me a Microsoft fanboy.
If holding opinions that contradict facts you quote for the benefit of an evil company you have little to do with makes you a fanboy, then you are a fanboy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
100 million Zunes on the wall, 100 million Zunes...
take one down, pass it around...
Oh wait, I didn't want it back...
100 million Zunes on the wall.
^ [IGNORE MS ASTROTURFER] ^
(a million zunes shipped doesn't mean sold, stop inflating your numbers the way sony did with the ps3)
I think that about covers it. Got any more insight back there?
DRM issues aside .. DRM sucks; but I think it's overblown.
If the zune was 1/2 the thickness - or thinner than an ipod - I wonder how much better it would have performed in the market. The current size is on par with what I'd expect 7 years ago from a early ipod. That's an engineering challenge much more difficult than making a portable brick that plays movies.
I've watched the form factor issue destroy Palm, now the marketdroids at microsoft have missed this mind boggingly obvious fact - thin and light is sexy.
..don't panic
There's a big difference between goods sold to the end-user, and channel-stuffing. I can believe that Microsoft got distributors and dealers to take a million units, but I have no reason to believe they've done any more than that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So, did one rich guy buy 9,999,999 zunes? And then Ballmer's bought one for his uncle?
I don't see how they could possibly con a million real people into suffering under their lame slow-to-set-up restricted and annoying version of music sharing.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
I haven't even heard of anyone who was thinking of buying one.
In fact I have not even seen any zunes.
Does this product really exist?
Has anyone seen one in real life?
This million zunes must be locked on some stock in the underground, waiting hopelessly.
One of my fellow IT drones bought a Zune, after laughing off my reasons why NOT to buy one. But then, he also chose to upgrade to Vista 'just cuz'... after I again tried explaining the problems with Vista.
After playing around with it a bit... it plays music and the screen is good for showing off pics of the kids. If you don't care about "squirting" and other (broken) features, you could do worse. But then, I paid $120 for a 20GB Creative Jukebox Zen NX in December 2003, and I'll use it until it won't play music any more.
"Make cyberlove, not cyberwar!" -Khaed(544779)
I personally don't know anybody with iPod, Zune, Archos, Creative or any other player. Does this mean they don't exist? Or that they don't exist in Finland?
You don't know what you don't know.
Zune == bust
That is the beauty of the Internet.
If MS says we sold x million of trinkets, and the geeks of the world say, "Whoa! I have not seen any", although the evidence would be completely anecdotal, it would point to a probable disconnect between reality and the press release.
As some pople have already pointed out, it seems like MS is talking about HD players, shipped, not sold to final users.
They could narrow it a bit more to brown players, manufactured by companies whose name starts with M. I think they have achieved 100% shipped units on that deparment.
Do you know what they say about lies and statistics?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When Steve Jobs went public on his dislike of DRM his comments were summarily dismissed as anything but the momentous announcement they were.
You are just seeing what you want to see, Apple has received unmitigated criticism for their DRM policies (forced on them by the music industry, as it is pretty apparent now).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We own 2 Zune devices and enjoy them. We also own 2 Ipods so this doesn't become a comparative thread. My beef with Zune is their terrible service policy. Using some of the online based services their ground courrier policy is absurd. Unlike Dell, who overnight courrier's product, or Maxtor or Blackberry, that replace the device prior to receipt of the defective device once a legitimate RMA is generated, they feel that it is acceptable to use extremely slow UPS ground transport. Our device was determined to have a defective hard drive on May 7th and a replacement box was sent via ground, arriving on May 15th. It was boxed and given back to UPS the same day but only got to Zune's repair center in Texas on May 24th. It was immediately replaced and back in UPS' system on May 25th. The new unit is now scheduled to arrive on June 4th, 19 working days after the RMA was generated. As a company trying to break into a saturated marektplace, you would think that they would follow the norm in the industry, if not try to exceed, regarding servicing of their products. Any complaints issued with the Zune team had the standard reply of "it is not our decision, but that of UPS'. I disgaree completely, as it is Zune's decision to have chosne ground service as the default with UPS. Needless to say, i will go out of my way at this point to discourage anyone from purchasing a Zune device.
First, it appears that the newspaper story is inaccurate--they have NOT sold 1 million Zunes yet; they actually said that they EXPECT to sell 1 million by the END of June:
t s_zune.html
http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/05/microsof
"Bach didn't actually say that Microsoft had already sold a million Zunes. If you listen to the interview, which the Chronicle helpfully provides in a podcast, what Bach said was
Bach: WHEN WE FINISH OUR FISCAL YEAR IN JUNE we'll have sold a little over a million Zunes, so we feel very good about that. [emphasis added]
That's what we used to call an editing error, one that mistakes a projection with actual sales and adds about 15% to the time frame. Microsoft still has more than a month to sell its first million Zunes, which would put it on the schedule it set for itself, not ahead. "
Second, to answer how long it took Apple to sell 1 million iPods, look at their quarterly sales figures:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/ipod_sales.html
10/23/01: iPod introduced
06/30/03: 984,000 total iPods sold
09/30/03: 1,320,000 total iPods sold
Based on the 92 day difference, you can calculate that they sold the 1 millionth iPod around 7/5/03.
So, 10/23/01 - 7/5/03 = 620 days, or about 20.5 months to sell the first 1 million iPods, compared with Microsofts' prediction (based on the ACTUAL quote, not the inaccurate article) of 11/14/06 - 6/30/07, or 228 days (7.5 months).
While this sounds impressive, it should be noted that the iPod was MAC ONLY until 10/13/03 (ie, throughout the entire period during which it sold it's first 1 million iPods. Not only was it Mac-only (aside from 3rd-party hacks), but it was restricted to FIREWIRE-ENABLED Macs, which weren't even introduced until the end of 1999. Assuming about 4% of the market for the Mac, and assuming that perhaps half the Macs in use at the time included FireWire, that means only about 2% of the total computer market could even use the iPod.
In addition, even those third-party hacks for Windows compatibility (which mostly sucked, and which weren't available for the first year or so) *still* required the PC in question to include FireWire; at the time, I believe only a tiny fraction of Windows machines included it.
In other words, it took Apple 2.7 times as long to sell their first 1 million iPods, but they did so with 1/50th of the market available to the Zune!
In addition, at the time there was no iTunes store, not to mention that the original iPod cost (at the time) $399 for 5 GB, with no video, no photos, no games, no color screen, no podcasts, etc etc, vs. the (current) Zune's $249 for 30 GB with video, photos, etc etc, all of which makes the iPod's early sales rates even more impressive.
no cookie for you, monkey
According to this article the quote from Microsoft's Robbie Bach is incorrect. Bach doesn't claim to have sold a million Zunes, instead he says "When we finish our fiscal year in June we'll have sold a little over a million Zunes, so we feel very good about that."
So they think they're on schedule to ship a million, but not yet.
Apparently The Chronicle misquoted him.
Garbage in, garbage out. Nothing new there. Nothing connected to M$ is reliable.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
really need to stop suckin off steve jobs all that spooge is gettin to your brain, i know you fags like the ipod cause of the rounded curves dont hurt your anuses as much as the troll dolls do but damn the zune aint bad but it aint perfect