A Million Zunes Sold 424
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.
Re:but ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:3, Informative)
Good job pulling that 10% figure out of your ass. Myself, I try to get sources when I pull off numbers:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/09ipod.ht
If the Zune had taken 10% of the market, it would certainly have been significant. Less than 1%? No-name cheap players have probably done that much,
Re:And I still don't know anyone who owns one.... (Score:3, Informative)
Another 700,000 are just sitting on the store shelves collecting dust. Actual sales to consumers - 50,000.
That's MSFT style accounting for you. 40 million Vista license sold, yet that included the two months before christmas when they started giving away vouchers.
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:5, Informative)
1/100 = 1% not 0.1%
The only way to get down to 0.1% is if the iPod only had a 10% share of the overall MP3 player market. I'm pretty sure the iPod's market share is something like 60 or 70 percent.
soo..
100/.6 = ~166 million total MP3 players
1/166 = zune market share of 0.6%
Re:Best Buy, Comp USA, Wal-Mart? (Score:2, Informative)
"1,000,000 sold to vendors perhaps? Sold to customers might be different but if there are 1 mil Zunes on shelves or in stock out there M$ can claim "million sold.""
Sorry, no. That 1MM units is sell through to customers, not sell in to retailers. Companies almost never refer to sell in numbers, as quantity sold in is liable to be returned.
I've seen the NPD data. Microsoft isn't lying here.
Re:but ... (Score:5, 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.
10% of the "hard drive" market (Score:2, Informative)
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:2, Informative)
Zune Pros and Cons (Score:1, Informative)
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/ [zuneinsider.com]
ZuneCorps http://zunecorps.com/ [zunecorps.com]
ZuneSphere http://www.zunesphere.com/ [zunesphere.com]
Wired Zune http://wiredzune.com/ [wiredzune.com]
Zunerama http://zunerama.com/ [zunerama.com]
Zuney http://www.zuney.net/cmps_index.php/ [zuney.net]
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
Re:How is this insightful? (Score:5, Informative)
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&artic
"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
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:4, Informative)
By (fiscal) year, Apple sold this many iPods:
2002 381,000
2003 939,000
2004 4,416,000
2005 22,497,000
2006 39,409,000
2007 31,615,000 (the two fiscal quarters ending in March 07)
So Microsoft's sales of 1,000,000 would be impressive if it had actually sold that many to consumers. The fact is however, that Microsoft reports sales by counting how many units it has pushed off on retailers. Microsoft reported sales of 10 million Xbox 360s last fall, after only selling 6 million to users. It continues to push retailers to take deliveries of units to create the appearance that the 360 has not reached saturation, despite little new growth. Given that it could dump 4 million 360's on retailers last fall, it's actually a pretty dismal failure that Microsoft can't manage to similarly fake sales of 4 million Zunes, even without ever selling one. If it can only mange to announce meeting its stated goal for June, it doesn't even care anymore. This is a very dead product.
Zune vs. iPhone: Five Phases of Media Coverage [roughlydrafted.com]
iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf [roughlydrafted.com]
Next Gen Sales - Q1 2007 - Zune, Xbox, PS3, Wii, Apple TV [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:but ... (Score:2, Informative)
Well I'm in the UK and I have one; for a few reasons
Mind you the only other UK person I saw with one was an MS employee.