SlashGear Japan
Personally I find it difficult to believe that the Zune was only released last November, but I guess that’s the side-effect of big rumour run-up periods. Anyway, Microsoft set themselves the goal of selling one million of the little buggers in six months, and according to Entertainment and Devices Decision President Robbie Back they’ve actually done it already.
It’s not all champagne and fellatio, however; Bach is very aware that they’ve not made outstanding inroads into the hard-drive based market:
“In the category we’re in, the hard-disk-based category, we’ve got about 10 percent market share. It’s a good start. It’s not an overwhelming start. I’m not going to pretend it’s some gigantic move”
He also addresses one of the major criticism points, the wireless transfer, which people have lambasted both for the three plays/three days file expiry and for the basic lack of people to swap music with:
“People are sharing. When your installed base is a million, the benefits of sharing, frankly, aren’t as wide as we hope to see in the future. One of the challenges for us is continuing to build on the install base”
I have a soft-spot for the Zune; not for any particular loyalty to Microsoft of even to the player itself, but in recognition of the fact that if portable music is going to continue advancing then we need strong competitors to Apple’s omni-present iPod. Right now the Zune itself might not be strong, but you’d be a fool to underestimate Microsoft and the investment they’re willing to pump into the market.
SFgate [via Zune-Online]
27 Responses to “Microsoft: Zune exceeds targets, sells 1m, still work to be done”
lrd May 28, 2007
Well let’s see. In my family iPODs 8 or more; Zunes: 0
-1Mmmm? Doesn’t look promosing.
mark May 28, 2007
I’d root for a competitor with an innovative and useful product for the consumer.
But Microsoft just folds when it comes to DRM (wifi mess) and the music labels ($1 per Zune deal). Their approach just harms the consumer and the download music market. Not rooting for them until they wake up.
+1flint May 28, 2007
Ha Ha …SOLD 1 million? More like stuffed the retail channels along with the Xbox.
-2No way
John Davis May 28, 2007
Zune?
You have got to be joking!
In six months, MS has sold 1,000,000 Zunes. To whom? Customers? No. To retail stores.
Stacks of Zunes, like XBoxes, tablet PCs and Vista packages lie gathering dust in stock rooms all over the world.
Origami?
The last decent MS product was Word 5.1.
Since then nothing.
Their hardware sucks. Their OSes suck big time.
ME? CE? NT 4.0?
Vista?
Give me a break. After FIVE years?
I’m sorry. They make good mice.
In that sense they are one up on Apple!
John Davis
-2CompetionGood May 28, 2007
You claim to have a softspot for Microsoft so as to give Apple competion…well
-1this begs the question what kind of computer do you use in the name of competion?
Chris Davies May 28, 2007
Actually, I claim to have a soft-spot for the Zune, not for Microsoft, and even then only as an Apple alternative. I also have a soft-spot for Samsung, Archos and Creative, and anyone else who puts forward another option to the established market-leader.
Incidentally, I use Windows computers – an old desktop I put together myself years ago, and a Tablet PC. If you’d like to buy me a lovely new MacBook Pro, that would be great, because right now I can’t afford one… and even if I could, I’d prefer to wait for the elusive Mac Tablet, should it ever appear.
[quote comment="22744"]You claim to have a softspot for Microsoft so as to give Apple competion…well
+2this begs the question what kind of computer do you use in the name of competion?[/quote]
FilmPhotoWeb May 28, 2007
Just as Vista played catch-up with Mac OSX (the version released 5 years ago), the Zune is trying to catch Apple’s first-release iPods. Had MS released Zune in 2002, they might have a competitor to the iPod. And I doubt MS’s data on the million sales. They’re notorious for cooking the sales books, using figures based on product in the sales channels as actual product sold. Too bad the media won’t call them to task when they misrepresent the truth so blatantly.
When Apple ships the iPhone in 2 weeks, just listen to the vacuum of buzz around the Zune. MS will never in their wildest dreams create a device to compete with the iPhone. Never. And that’s exactly what the Zune is trying to do.
-1KenC May 28, 2007
Have you really thought about what you just said?
“in recognition of the fact that if portable music is going to continue advancing then we need strong competitors to Apple’s omni-present iPod.”
Why is it a “fact”? Apple hasn’t had “strong competitors” for over 5 years now, and the industry still seems to be “advancing”. So, perhaps your “fact” is just supposition.
Apple without strong competition has been trying to knock down the DRM wall, while MS has been trying to strengthen the DRM wall, by adding DRM to your own creations if you squirt them to anyone else. MS has been pre-paying DRM royalties to Universal. Why does rooting for MS help advance anything? If anything, their efforts have been undermining Apple’s to knock down the DRM wall.
Then you had this to say, “you’d be a fool to underestimate Microsoft and the investment they’re willing to pump into the market.”
How many times have we heard that? Of course, no one “underestimate”s MS’s billions of cash. However, why root for this? They want market dominance, and give a crap about quality. If they succeed, it won’t advance anything. Look at their biggest success, Vista. How is that an advance on anything?
Neutralfog city dave May 28, 2007
I agree with the general consensus here. It seems very unlikely that Microsoft has actually sold 1M Zunes to paying customers, but it is certainly plausible (and there is historical precedent from Redmond) that they have stuffed the channel so that they can proclaim “1,000,000 Zunes shipped”. If you look at the numbers from NPD Group and others, and you divide the Zune’s marketshare by the total number of DAPs sold over the last six months, the Zune comes out at around 600,000 units sold since its introduction, and that might be generous. There’s just no way.
It would be nice if the Zune did exist to push Apple to continue innovating, as the author suggests, but there are major problems with that hope. First, Microsoft’s love affair with the music labels and DRM is bad for consumers and the industry (paying a piracy tax to Universal sets a very bad precedent that Apple with thankfully quash). Secondly, abandoning its former Plays For Sure partners has made alternatives to Apple’s dominance weaker and more fragmented, not stronger. And lastly, Apple has never been known to sit back and enjoy their lead and just let their technological innovation lapse. I don’t think Apple needs someone nipping at their heels to keep driving their technology to new levels. They are always competing against themselves. (Replacing the iPod Mini with the iPod Nano when the Mini was the best selling iPod and at the top of its game is a perfect example. That was a move that stunned analysts and something most companies would never dream of doing. Killing a product at the height of its popularity without milking it for everythign it’s worth? Ludicrous!)
+2CompetionGood May 28, 2007
There is plenty of competion for Apple. You yourself said Samsung, Archos and Creative and off course zune. I’m sure there are many others. So given that an Apple product can be had
+1for anywhere from 600$ on up and you are using windows then pardon me if you comments about competion seem rather phoney. I could be wrong but you must see how shallow your comments sound. Know if you fall back to your waiting on a tablet…well one could always be
waiting for something. But I’ll give you the benifit of the doubt and when the tablets are available I hope to hear how you purchased one.
Joe May 28, 2007
Bach also announced that sales of the Ford Edsel are doing very well, surpassing those of the Toyota Camry.
Man, this guy’s gotta be smoking some primo stuff!
Neutraljbelkin May 28, 2007
It should be noted that MS is in the habit of counting SHIPPED as sold so I wouldn’t really rely on what their desperate-to-save-his-job guy has to say … right now, MS is tracking be #3 in consoles by year’s end – especially since the reviews for Halo 3 have been middling at best. You’ll notice he says 10% of HDD market share, that for the first week after the Zune was released and ignoring all non-HDD units the real numbers, now they are at 2.5% of the market the last 3 months – Apple sells about 3 million every month, you can do the math – MS was so proud to announce they had 30,000 stores selling Zunes – so basically each stores sells around 2 A MONTH. Probably the same number of WebTv’s that MS sells.
NeutralBill May 28, 2007
You will find a tablet based Mac at Otherworld Computing [macsales.com] in June as a modified MacBook
See this article:
http://www.toddstauffer.com/20.....iche-only/
I also doubt the sale of 1 Mil Zunes to real people rather than retail sales, just like the cooked up numbers for Vista. I was really looking forward to installing Vista on my custom PC, butu it is two years old and I am worried about driver problem. Also, the software I need for work is not compatible [with Vista or Mac] so it is not an option. I just wanted something more secure than XP, so I have a new Mac Pro Tower 3GHz quad Xeon. Wow is it fast! I use my custom PC that I built myself, for the apps for work, but everything else , my new Mac. I got 2GB RAM and 1.25 TB on 3 HD’s, with two 500GB’s as RAID 0. It starts up in a few seconds. Way cool! I highly recommend.
-2Vincent Nguyen May 28, 2007
Tough crowd, definitely not pro M$. I’m not fond of the Zune either, and yes I believe the 1M was mainly sold to retail outlets (poor schmucks!)
-1Mohammad Ali May 28, 2007
Quite Frankly the only thing I can agree on is Vista pretty much does suck, I mean it could have been great but too many small things that are annoying add up to make you sick of it…Quite frankly though, I do not like the iPod. I’d give the Zune a chance.
+2Peter May 28, 2007
I’ve got 3 ipods around the home.
Every one has them that I know.
Why buy any other ? The Accessory Market is huge.
The software is the best. The price is Ball park.
End of story.
-2Bill May 28, 2007
MS needs a flash based player to help sell. I did not want to buy an iPod for my wife as I though that there were better deals on cheaper , similar products. But my friend convinced me to buy my wife a Shuffle for when she runs. I was impressed with the quality, sound and ease of iTunes [on her PC, eMachine]. Our cars have an auxillary audio input, and we are always fumbling with CD’s for the kids. So I bought an iPod nano for the kids music and have my own music on the same nano as well. It sounds great, even plugged into the home receiver using an audio cord that came with my digital camera. It was so easy to install iTunes on a 3 year old cheap eMachine, then it automatically copied the CD when inserted into the CD drive. I was amazed. It synced with the iPod and showed an icon for both units, and gave me a choice to add all the music or create a playlist. How in the hell can you say you do not like the iPod. Mo, you are the minority, but it is your choice, dude.
Peace.
+1Bill May 28, 2007
I figured out how 1 million Zunes were sold. Bill Gates bought 999,999 of them.
-2Chris K. May 28, 2007
I have seen many of the Zune accessories sitting on clearance racks in my local retailers lately. One can only imagine how badly some third party accessory manufacturers got burned by producing Zune accessories, thinking that people would actually want a Zune! I have NEVER seen anyone using a Zune anywhere! Of course, iPods are ubiquitous! Microsoft can claim whatever sales figures they want to try to save face but the reality is that they have failed to make any kind of meaningful dent in the market. Whatever little traction they did get was at the expense of other manufacturers who they stabbed in the back. If anything, the Zune name is forever tarnished in the minds of most consumers and will never be thought of as “cool”. Instead of flailing around in the marketplace trying to monopolize everything, Microsoft should focus their energies and resources on producing a real innovative operating system instead of trying to copy Mac OS X. The fact that Microsoft claims to have spent ridiculous amounts of money to develop and market Vista is pretty pathetic. A company with the resources of Microsoft should be producing an operating system that sells itself simply by being superb!
+1Bill May 28, 2007
Chris, I think MS would do better if they just COMPLETELY copied the Mac OS. I mean, how much more innovative, reliable and stable can you get?
-1Nick A. May 28, 2007
obviously a majority that have posted have an Ipod. Some of you can not believe that the Zune has sold more than 1m because you are stubborn. You just can not face the fact that the Zune is doing better than expected. I have seen about 70% of Ipod owners at my college change to Zune owners because they are sick of thier Ipods and/or Apple. I for one am a Zune owner as well, and just because you think that MS Zune doesn’t have enough to beat the Ipod, the Zune has been out for less than a year and the ipod has been out for about 5 years.
NeutralJeff May 28, 2007
The iPod only needs competition if it becomes lame and stagnant. Apple doesn’t do that–it’s primary competition generally does though. No I don’t believe people have purchase a million Zunes; there’s just not that many zombies out there. There’s some other explanation.
-1Mohammad Ali May 29, 2007
[quote comment="22768"]MS needs a flash based player to help sell. I did not want to buy an iPod for my wife as I though that there were better deals on cheaper , similar products. But my friend convinced me to buy my wife a Shuffle for when she runs. I was impressed with the quality, sound and ease of iTunes [on her PC, eMachine]. Our cars have an auxillary audio input, and we are always fumbling with CD’s for the kids. So I bought an iPod nano for the kids music and have my own music on the same nano as well. It sounds great, even plugged into the home receiver using an audio cord that came with my digital camera. It was so easy to install iTunes on a 3 year old cheap eMachine, then it automatically copied the CD when inserted into the CD drive. I was amazed. It synced with the iPod and showed an icon for both units, and gave me a choice to add all the music or create a playlist. How in the hell can you say you do not like the iPod. Mo, you are the minority, but it is your choice, dude.
Peace.[/quote]
Quite simple bill….I don’t like the iPod…there thats how i can say it =]
I do not like them for personal reason, I have had way to many malfunctions with them and even though they replace most of the hardware for free, it got annoying after a while. I don’t need anything like that if my luck sucks with it. This doesn’t mean I’m going to go buy a Zune. Besides for me CD’s are fine, why?
Well also I don’t listen to music on the radio….I hate commercial music. I listen to the underground and they only come out with new music so often by then burning a new CD is easy and convenient. I have listened to the stuff from before so much because of the delay of new material that I don’t ever want to or need to hear it again….So I can live without them =]
-1Vijay May 29, 2007
Not really sure, how true the news is. 1 mill is a bign number but havent sen anyone use a zune of date. Infact in EU and JP, its not even seen in stores.
Neutralboead May 29, 2007
I have a 30gb iPod for a number of years. When it dies I likely won’t buy another iPod product. Also iTunes is horrible, for a company that claims to make/write superior software I don’t see why they can’t write a simple Windows app that actually works properly and doesn’t eat up a ridiculous amount of system resources. Gee, there’re plenty of other companies (big and small) that can do it, why can’t Apple? Also, I’ve had so many problems with my iPod I don’t know where to begin and not just me. I know many with iPods who have also had many a problems with their player including undeserved scratching and marring. I also know several with Creative Labs players that beat the snot out of them and have never had an issue. My daughter has a Samsung player and its way better then a Nano, she actually uses the FM radio and voice recorder – Oh and it was cheaper. Someone said that the last 5 years has indeed shown advancements from Apple without competition. Really? The iPod has hardly changed and all the things people want (radio, wireless connection, bundled accessories, larger screen, and so on) Apple is not delivering. They will decide what YOU want, not you – you’re too stupid to know what you want.
Microsoft doesn’t make many hardware products but they do make one of the best mice and keyboards. Someone mentioned Origami but that wasn’t a MS product but rather Toshiba (I believe). The Origami project is more of a lesson in micro PC operating systems and applications. I’m glad someone is spending time and money on it; it is without a doubt the future of communications. But I’m sure Apple will wait, make one that looks like an iPod and claim they invented it just like they did the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV. All product designs made by others years before that Apple redesigned (for the better) and claim to have invented. Did you know Jobs claimed to have invented sliced bread? Or maybe it was the internet or was that someone else?
My next player will likely be a Zune, I just don’t want one that squirts! LOL, I’ll wait for the next generation coming out this fall which should support wireless sync and have a larger hard drive. Or I might just get a MotoQ and a handful of SD cards. iPhone = $600 or a MotoQ + SD card = $175 = Humm, that’s a hard choice to make and since the iPhone won’t be available for Verizon Wireless my decision is that much easier.
+1Bill May 29, 2007
Mo, I here ya. I only got the nano as it was free from ameritrade. I bought the shuffle for the wife. I did not need it, but it does come in handy when my wife has my CD’s in her car.
NeutralBoead, I have a much different experience. iTunes works great on my two PC’s [eMachine and custom] and my Mac. Over 100 million people can’t be wrong, but milage certainly varies.
My Treo died in 4 months. The replacement would be $450 [It sat in the box for 7 months and has 2 - 3 months warranty left]. But Cingular has the Blackjack. It is as thin as the moto Q and similar in price. Hard to compete for that price. I love Macs, but Steve Ballmer had it right when he said ‘who would buy one [iPhone] for their kids to lose and drop?’. It is obviously a niche market. If the Treo dies again, I will probably just use my old RAZR and Palm T3. I even have a $400 Apple gift certificate, but would have to have agood reason to get the iPhone. Maybe I will buy a new digital camera at the Apple store.
boead May 29, 2007
I’m running Windows Media Player 11 and its using around 12MB of RAM, less the 9MB when shrunken down. I’m also watching iTunes running in Task Manager and its using 102MB of RAM and still over 90MB shrunken. This is old news.
I have practically banned iTunes from my office of nearly 50 people because it consumes so much memory and system resources people think their PC’s are broken. I tell them to stop using iTunes and they comment how much faster their computers are – 100 million people aren’t wrong just mostly stupid. Also over 90% (90 million?) iPod owners us it on a WindowsPC.
My iPod locks often. I have to reset it to get it back way to often to be reasonable. Battery life is down to hardly 2 hours, it started doing that after just a few months. The analog output from the dock has only one channel unless you wiggle it a lot. That happened just after the warranty was up. And I don’t even use it very much. Only in the car and occasionally on a trip. My buddies black Nano is so scratched up you can hardly see the display. My other friends 4G Photo is on its third hard drive and my other friends 5G has also been back to Apple a couple of times for repair – thank god for Apple Care, you need it!
My 10 year old daughters Samsung has been used a lot, even been washed and dried a couple of times in her jeans and it still looks new, certainly its clean.
The iPod is just a Media Sensation.
Neutral