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.

Really?

[villaged]

The only time I have ever seen one in the wild is when a Microsoft SE was using one.

Has anyone ever been somewhere and seen more than say three in a five minute span?

Re:They're catching up, then...

[neoform]

Catching up? Maybe..

Catching on? No.

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

Probably true. but...

[Bullfish]

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.

Re:10% of $product market...

[moonbender]

Apple has sold 100 million iPods, so, no, 1 million Zunes don't make up 10% of the market. More like 0.1%, I guess. Linux desktop market share is a lot more than that...

How many sold to their own employees?

[gilesjuk]

After the iPod amnesty at Microsoft I would imagine they have finally reached this target.

Sold or shipped?

[bbzzdd]

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?

Re:but ...

[maxume]

If you don't have, like really, really expensive headphones, why not just buy the player you like best and transcode to mp3? Supporting Vorbis is nice, but I don't think things will be at a point where it matters for quite some while, and by then, the mp3 patents will have expired. The quality per bit advantage isn't something 98% of people are even going to understand.

Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil.

[Tickletaint]

That's a good point, but you're kidding yourself if you think the iPod's Mac-exclusivity didn't affect the patterns of its uptake in its first year on the market. I remember a lot of musicians in that time frame mentioning this cool new toy from Apple, and I don't think I know a single musician who uses a PC (though I'm sure the peanut gallery here at Slashdot will be more than happy to supply a few).

No Linux

[simonloach]

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...

Ogg Support

[Lachlan Hunt]

have about 9Gb of music in Ogg Vorbis format and they don't support it

Unfortunately, one of the major reasons why Microsoft and Apple don't support Ogg Vorbis/Theora is fear of submarine patents. It's actually safer for them to pay the MPEG LA and implement patent-encumbered formats, than it is to risk believing that Ogg Vorbis and Theora really are royalty-free.

Re:Great to hear everyone's personal experiences

[gnasher719]

'' I hate the iTunes DRM. I hate the Sony CD's rootkit. I hate the DRM files in Rhapsody/Napster. Why is it that we never hear about those much anymore? Don't we all HATE them with every fiber of our being? ''

There is not a single song with DRM in my iTunes library. There is not a single song with DRM on my iPod. My wife got one CD-like music container which I had to import on my four year old PowerMac because the MacBook would just eject it; it was made by Sony and no "CD" sign anywhere on it. This might have been a close encounter with DRM; I don't know.

I don't hate DRM at all. I just haven't purchased and won't purchase music with DRM.

Re:but ...

[ronanbear]

Guy in the office beside me has one. I've never seen it though as he doesn't use it in the office. The only reason I knew he had one was he was complaining about getting a charger because he had to plug it into his computer to charge it. I explained that because USB is 5V standard he should be able to plug his USB cable into an iPod-USB wall socket charger which is the same voltage.

Worked apparently.

I was pretty surprised that he bought it. Probably just has a big collection of WMA files.

Re:Best Buy, Comp USA, Wal-Mart?

[ivan256]

NPD data isn't Microsoft data, and unless every user registers their product Microsoft doesn't know how many were "sold" to end users. They don't much care either. They don't sell Zunes to end users. They sell them to distributors and retailers. If they collected money for a million units, they've sold a million units. If every WalMart, Target, and BestBuy still has 4 on the shelf, Microsoft still "sold" a million units, even though only half of that is in the wild. This article doesn't mention NPD data at all.

Not that it matters anyway. Saying you've sold a million at this point is admitting defeat. Apple sold that many players last week. A million in almost a year is horrible and complete failure.

Re:but ...

[DMoylan]

i travel on public transport here in dublin ireland. 3+ hours a day. it's interesting to watch the various devices in use.

every day i see dozens of various players/pdas/phones in use on the bus, waiting in queues and so forth. i would recognise a zune if i saw one as it has such a large screen. still haven't seen one. ipods, creative, archos (and i thought they were rare) are common. i watch my portable tv on a nokia 770.

they should be more visible as you can watch videos on them so they should be in peoples hands and not in pockets and again i still don't see them.

i've seen psp's before they were released in ireland. i've seen about a dozen sharp zaurus's (even the rare only released in japan versions) so it is a good place to spot hardware.

while you're correct in pointing out that the numbers out there are relatively small i still think you should have a good chance to spot one by now if you are in the right public space. even if you only want to point at the poor sod and laugh. :-)

Re:They're catching up, then...

[DECS]

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 [roughlydrafted.com]
iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf [roughlydrafted.com]
Next Gen Sales - Q1 2007 - Zune, Xbox, PS3, Wii, Apple TV [roughlydrafted.com]

MS missed the form factor

[xtal]

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.