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A Million Zunes Sold

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the zero-sold-to-anyone-i-know dept.

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.

26 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. but ... by eneville · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?
    1. Re:but ... by tomstdenis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You realize that a million isn't much right in the grand scheme of populations right?

      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. And given that I don't regularly hang out with 32 peeps [assuming all were sold in Canada though...] it's not surprising me that I haven't seen one.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    2. Re:but ... by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah... The Zune is something you only show to your very closest friends, amongst nervous laughter, as you explain to them the embarrassing chain of events that led you to buying it.

      So, if you have less than a hundred very close friends, you're not likely to have seen one.

      --
      - These characters were randomly selected.
    3. Re:but ... by $pearhead · · Score: 5, Informative

      i don't know anyone in the uk who has a zune..
      That might have something to do with the fact that it has not been released in Europe yet.
    4. Re:but ... by spisska · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've found that Ogg Vorbis offers noticeably better fidelity than mp3 at comparable comression. It's not something that you can easily hear with a portable player and cheap headphones, but on quality gear the difference is obvious.

      Ogg is much, much better at preserving the character of high-frequency sounds and overtones (think cymbals and strings), and much more faithfully preserves dynamic range. Again, this won't make much difference on the train with your ipod ear buds, but run it through a decent sound system and the mp3s just sound muddy. And when it comes to Classical music, mp3 is nearly useless. Ogg does a decent enough job of it, but I still keep Classical and many Jazz recordings in FLAC.

      From what I understand, the lack of Ogg support on many players stems less from commercial or legal concerns (patent issues vis a vis Fraunhofer notwithstanding) than from technical issues. Ogg needs more juice to decode, which means needing stronger processors, better means of heat dissipation, and a necessary hit on battery performance. Not that it can't be done, but it requires more expensive components and shorter battery lives.

      But the lack of Ogg support on the ipod is not a huge deal. I wish it were there, but that doesn't stop me from transcoding from Ogg (or FLAC) to mp3 for the ipod and keeping the Oggs and FLACs on my Myth system.

      I do favor open source whenever possible but am no fanatic. I am, however, a musician, and sound quality is as imortant as, or more important to me than portability. Especially when portability is so easy after the fact.

      And I think it's pretty stupid of you to not realize that other people may do things diferently than you, and they're not wrong because of it.

      As far as the Zune claims go, I don't buy it for a minute, any more than I buy the claim of 40m Vista licenses sold.

      I take the el to work in Chicago, and every day I see dozens of people with ipods. I've yet to see a single Zune in the wild, and at retail outlets like Microcenter or Target there always seems to be a crowd of people looking at the ipods on display while the Zune is simply ignored. I don't think I've ever even seen a working Zune on display -- they're always off or broken.

      Microsoft's numbers don't mean a thing. The numbers to look at are from retailers: How many Zunes have been sold at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.? It's certainly not as high as Microsoft would have you believe. No matter what color they make it.

  2. Finally! What I've been waiting for! by Z0mb1eman · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Finally! What I've been waiting for! by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm waiting for the Grapefruit Zune, because then I'll know that the squirting feature works like it should...

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    2. Re:Finally! What I've been waiting for! by Tickletaint · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Only because the color is emblematic of everything else wrong with the Zune. Skin it all you want, but the Zune is still hobbled by Microsoft's staggering failure to "get it."

      --
      Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
  3. 10% of $product market... by patio11 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:10% of $product market... by Headcase88 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I like that point but I'm pretty sure Zune doesn't have 10% of the MP3 player market by a long shot.

      --
      "When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
    2. Re:10% of $product market... by nanosquid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not the market that makes the difference, it's the company. In the past, Microsoft has been able to kill competitors simply by announcing a product, and if that wasn't enough, they'd follow it with billions in marketing and loss leaders. Microsoft wanted to make Zune a big success and they have failed; it's just another clunky Microsoft product that may or may not sell enough to break even eventually.

      OTOH, when other companies achieve 10% market share against a convicted but unrepentant monopolist with billions of dollars in his war chest and an army of lawyers, yes, that is big news.

    3. Re:10% of $product market... by berj · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're off by almost as much as the original poster.

      1/100 = 1% not 0.1%

      The only way to get down to 0.1% is if the iPod only had a 10% share of the overall MP3 player market. I'm pretty sure the iPod's market share is something like 60 or 70 percent.

      soo..

      100/.6 = ~166 million total MP3 players

      1/166 = zune market share of 0.6%

    4. Re:10% of $product market... by RodgerDodger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Apple doesn't have a market share of 100 million iPods. They've got an _installed base_ of 100 million iPods. During the first three months of '07, Apple sold 10,549,000 iPods - but the Shuffle and the Nano don't count (flash-based). Let's assume (for the sake of argument) that about half the iPods Apple sell are the HD models, and that they'll sell about the same again the April-June period. So you're looking at about 8-10 million HD iPods sold in the period described. Suddenly, a 10% market share for the Zune selling about 1 million in the same period isn't unrealistic.

      I think we can assume that the Microsoft guy got the size of the market right - he may be exaggerating sales by including units still in the channels and not with customers, but the size of the market is right.

      Still, I don't know who buys these things. But then, I don't think MS sells them in Australia yet, so that's hardly surprising for me.

      --
      "Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
  4. Re:And I still don't know anyone who owns one.... by peragrin · · Score: 4, Funny

    A million zunes sold, and 250,000 returned because they weren't ipods.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  5. Is the Zune a Player? by GaryPatterson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Sold? or Shipped? by Basilius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

  7. Best Buy, Comp USA, Wal-Mart? by Bayoudegradeable · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  8. Re:They're catching up, then... by neoform · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Catching up? Maybe..

    Catching on? No.

    They *still* haven't bought the domain zune.com, talk about stupid.

    --
    MABASPLOOM!
  9. Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil. by FonzCam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not that iPods were more visible among certain subcultures, it's because the iPod is more visible because of those bright white headphones. People advertise the fact that they are using an iPod. If you saw someone walking down the street listening to a Zune you'd probably think it was an iPod with 3rd party headphones.

  10. 1000000? by meta+coder · · Score: 5, Funny

    of course, it's binary

  11. Question by Vexorian · · Score: 4, Funny

    What is Steve Ballmer's uncle going to do with 1000000 zunes?

    --

    Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
  12. No Linux by simonloach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

  13. How much did they pay for this slashvertisement? by Ant+P. · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Check the UID and comment count of the "user" that submitted this story.

  14. Re:How is this insightful? by bmo · · Score: 4, Informative

    "this is Slashdot and you're bashing Microsoft."

    No, he's quite correct.

    Plus, I'll heap some more numbers upon you, just out of spite.

    Apple is going to sell 9.5 million iPods ending this quarter. 9.5 _million_ iPods in _one quarter_ , while it took _two_ quarters to sell 1 million Zunes.

    9.5 million versus 500 thousand/quarter. Please also note that I'm splitting the Zune sales evenly between two quarters, ignoring the initial early-adopter bump. You're not going to see many Zunes, period.

    http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articl eid=CA6428719

    "According to the firms latest report, global PMP/MP3 player unit shipments will rise to 268.6 million units in 2011, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13 percent from 128.7 million units in 2005. In 2007, player shipments are expected to rise to 216.9 million units, up 21.8 percent from 178.1 million in 2006, iSuppli said."

    So the market is going to grow by nearly 39 million units _this year alone_ and the Zune will be 2 million of that, roughly. That's not enough to be visible.

    --
    BMO

  15. Re:They're catching up, then... by DECS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Zune isn't a bad product "just because it's from Microsoft." It's a bad product because it's from Microsoft.

    A subtle difference. Don't confuse causation with simple correlation.

    Microsoft isn't working to make the Zune a good product, it's working to sell a bad product through FUD and intimidation, but in the consumer electronics world, MS isn't doing well at all, having lost many billions every year since 2001. If Microsoft spun its Apple-like hardware/consumer products off into its own company, it would be many times more beleagured than Apple ever was in the mid 80s.

    What's really going to be fun to watch is not how the Zune shrivels up next to the iPod, but how Windows Mobile is going to implode as soon as business customers realize that mobile phones don't have to spontaneously crash, spend 2 minutes rebooting, and offer arcane and bizarre interfaces and a generally crappy software experience. That is set to happen as soon as the iPhone hits. Not even AT&T can screw that up. That may make IT people question why they're continuing to use Windows products rather than an open operating systems based on Unix.

    This is simply Bill Gates' second pie in the face.

    Zune vs. iPhone: Five Phases of Media Coverage
    iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf
    Next Gen Sales - Q1 2007 - Zune, Xbox, PS3, Wii, Apple TV

  16. Industry, Markets, M$. by twitter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.