Microsoft: We'll eventually 'be the leader' in digital media players - Page 2

I do see Microsoft being the #1 music device seller. They will keep at it until they sell.

They did this with windows, office applications,the xbox,etc..

And don't forget that the numbers only reflect the Black Zune. I don't even think the other two colors (doodoo brown and squirt white) have even made it into the Top 100, while even older generation iPods are mopping the floor with pretty much every other portable music player despite the the super aggressive sale prices these companies are doing for the holidays.

Well, that's only partially true.

The Sony PS2 has sold 112 million units compared to the Xbox's 24-25 million units, according to wikipedia.

I too worry about history repeating itself, but Apple commands a massive advantage to say the least...much moreso than they did with the original personal computer revolution. They absolutely own the market. They have not just created a breakthrough device that is selling like crazy, they have created an entire sub-economy for that device. iPod has become a household name. Podcasting has become an industry standard term for the radio medium as well.

In other words, M$ has a LONG way to go. While their product does have some interesting features, it's nothing that will cause people to choose their product over Apple's enmasse.

I may be in the minority, but I actually think M$ might be in trouble in the long term. Apple's marketshare is growing, and Vista has been a disaster for some time. The Playstation 3 will outsell the Xbox 360 at least 5 to 1, just as the PS2 did. How many more "upgrades" of Windows and Office can they sell? Can those two products go on being the profit centers for 10, 20 years? In my opinion M$ has suffered from a serious case of "mission creep." They should never have gotten into the hardware business. Had they stuck to software, they'd be even more profitable than they are....though that is just an opinion, of course.

I liken the Zune to the first-generation Xbox. The Xbox was the first console to have a hard drive and a network port as standard. In all other respects, it was average at best, but the hard drive and the network port enabled Xbox Live.

I don't care what any of you think about Microsoft, Xbox Live is one of the best products to come out of Microsoft... well, ever. And it's hugely popular, with over 5 million subscribers worldwide.

The Zune is an average portable media player... except it has Wi-Fi. If Microsoft can build something around the Wi-Fi aspect of it, a Zune Live if you will, I believe Microsoft could very well claw market share away from Apple. I have no doubt that's their plan.

"We think that's actually pretty awesome" - the words of a vice president...can you imagine? I wouldn't put much faith into a company that has vice presidents that can't express themselves with a richer vocabulary.

The day MS is the leader in digital media players is the day Apple is leader in personal computing.

The other thing worthy of noting is that if Apple does release this futuristic widescreen, touch-screen iPod in January (don't know if they will or not), that will put them leaps and bounds ahead of all their competition. If it's taking Apple this long to develop it, I don't see other companies catching up very quickly.

The current 5G has barely been updated at all. Microsoft is competing with a very old player right now.

I wonder when they are going to oust Steve Ballmer. Gates is already on his way out. I guess Ballmer will drag the stock to the point of no return. It still hasn't gone past 30 and their announcements for Vista and Zune haven't really done anything for the stock.

I smell selloff.

Ballmer's MS is just so, so poor in everything they do, and so misguided in all the decisions they make.

Bottom line: people don't like Microsoft. People who buy Windows very rarely go out looking for a computer because it has Windows and other MS products on it. At one time, people sought MS, now, no one does. Despite the fact that MS tries hard to divorce this image from it's consumer products, the xBox and the Zune, so far they really haven't have any luck doing so.

Ballmer and his grunts have released a lot of manifestos and ultimatums to the press. I'm not sure any of these have had positive affect, and his position as CEO is entirely a testament to him being the luckiest man alive. He is cancer to MS, and until they get rid of him, the Zune will fail. I'm not sure it will succeed even with new people at the helm, but it definitely has a better chance.

Um, how about a CEO who says "Insanely Great?"

Marketese doesn't necessarily reflect a person. Plus, companies like MS have dozens -- if not hundreds -- of VPs.

I think Bill Gates just wanted something to sell and give away to Microsoft employees and families so that they weren't embarrassed by the iPod.

I wonder just how many Zunes will be returned after the wrapping is taken off? If I got a Zune, I would just return it and get something else. No offense Santa....

This makes me wonder... are MS employees alowed to use iPods, or be seen with them, while at work?

Which is why the stock hasn't gone past 30 in a LONG time, they are losing money on the Zune and XBox and vista still uses the same POS kernel. Microsoft is overbloated with VPs.

I would love to see Steve Ballmer dance around like a monkey, shouting and shouting "We screwed up, we screwed up, we screwed up..........." as Apple's marketshare equals Microsoft in products being sold. Believe it or not, it actually may happen WAY before the Zune outsells the iPod.

I agree with you that MS is in long term trouble. They can't break out beyond Windows and Office. And having them stick with software isn't that great a strategy either because, because, . . . because they suck at making software.

Microsoft's forte is not in the design or manufacture of hardware or software. Their expertise is in establishing market dominance through shrewd contracting and abusive and coercive monopolistic behaviour. PC-DOS dominated the market because Gates was able to outmaneuver IBM into signing a contract that turned out to be ridiculously advantageous for MS. MS didn't even make the original DOS, Gates bought it from someone else! How's that for software expertise eh? Then the subsequent growth of DOS/Windows and Office relied mainly on using their monopoly position to force vendors into abusive and illegal (as courts determined later) supply contracts.

Their problem now is that the courts and the feds are onto their behaviour and are watching them closely to make sure they don't engage in more coercive monopolistic behaviour. On top of that, the new products they're banking on, XBox and Zune, aren't really tied to the Windows/Office monopoly so they can't rely on that to push Xbox and Zune.

Now they actually have to come out with a product that will sell based on quality and customer appeal. That is an undiscovered country for Microsoft. Imagine that-- build a product that consumers will actually want to buy.

Oh an by the way, does Ballmer have any other qualification to be Microsoft CEO other than "Bill's college buddy"? He has been a disaster.

tundraboy gets the "I couldn't have said it better" Award. Way to go!

Yeah, but he will actually dance around saying SQUIRTING, SQUIRTING, SQUIRTING, GIVE IT UP FOR ME!!!!!!!!! SQUIRTING, SQUIRTING, SQUIRTING!!!!!

And no he doesn't have any other qualification to be CEO than Bill Gate's College Buddy. His resume looks worse than that fake one that was being sent around for Bush's qualifications.

LOL at the poster who said the ZUNE comes in squirt white.

Also, it takes creativity to come up with a phrase like Insanely Great. Any MTV idiot can say pretty awesome.

The reason they think it is pretty awesome that they will only sell 1 million is that they will only lose 50 million or so dollars.

I don't think you're in the minority at all....

What I find so interesting is how Microsoft always said "the money's in the software" while IBM would say "the money's in the hardware", when the whole time Apple was saying "the money's in BOTH the hardware and software"....

Look at Microsoft now. Trying to get into hardware (IBM even taking a "stab" at software), and none of them seem to succeed at what they really never believed to be cash cows.

J Allard uses a Powermac G5 and has 9 iPods. He also led development on the Zune and I assume he uses a Winbox somewhere... I think it might have been mentioned in the same article that he hardly ever uses PCs....

It's a bit different this time. When MS went crazy with Windows the Macs were far more costly than the PCs on the market. The iPod doesn't suffer from that problem and already has a well established lineup that Apple continuously improves.

Apple could lose it, but I think they will continue to dominate if they don't rest on their laurels and continue to deliver well-priced iPods.

The only way microsoft will EVER make any profit on this, is if they can improve on their current position with the Zune. It's safe to say that they won't be improving on their current device. Products only get weaker with time. Their only hope is to fix all the bugs within the current system, some which run very deep, before they can stand a chance of improving with their next device. What are the odds of MS being able to fix these problems and get their act together? I think it's very slim given the company's history.

So, realistically, how long will MS stay in a market they're losing money in? I know they're MS, but realistically, how long can they stay? They said they're in it for the long haul, and I think it will be a very very long and dark haul. Don't the investors in this company have any say in the decisions? Or has ballmer actually convinced them it's a wise move? I guess he has no qualms about lying to the investors. He did after all say they weren't losing any money on the units, when it's a well known fact they're losting 50 bucks on each device.

Not to be devil's advocate, but at work, we have an IBM iSeries running OS/400. The hardware and software are EXTREMELY powerful and the OS is stable as all hell. Of course it only has business applications but still. IBM is still a fantastic company who is (at last) settling for it's niche market: businesses. Thus I don't think it's fair to pick on them for their hardware/software selections because the consumers no longer see the best of what they make unless they exist at work.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has never aimed at businesses. They've always aimed to be the most-adopted. Period. It's unfortunate that they dominate the business sector while not really caring for them. They're even using businesses as their Vista test-subjects. That's rude.

I agree with those saying that Microsoft needs new leadership. It begins with a CEO but also will eventually require an entire uprooting of MS's command line (pun intended). They need to streamline: have a strictly Windows and a strictly Office segment, held together only by the name "Microsoft." They need to cut the fat out of Vista. Abandon Win95, 98, XP support. Start from the ground up, just as Mac OS X did. Once they have a stable, efficient and slick operating system, they should seriously consider writing an OS that will run on the darwin kernel. Macs are here to stay and MS needs to do something to appeal to the market. Of course, though, that would require an OS that would actually compete with OS X instead of mimic it.

-Clive

Marketese.

It reflects poorly on Jobs and Apple. At the VP level, you'd expect them to use something other than "Insanely Great" or "pretty awesome" unless they were actual salesmen...and even as a salesmen, I wouldn't be too convinced by "I think this is pretty awesome" or "Boom! just like that".

If you'd look a little closer you'd see that the PS2 has shipped 112 million units, which is far different from sold.

On topic, I don't think Microsoft will catch up to Apple any time soon.

There's nothing inevitable about MS beating Apple. It depends on cause and effect, on the future actions of both companies. He doesn't know what future actions Steve will take.

Just to be clear, I own much more AAPL than MSFT...and good thing that. AAPL is the one thing that has saved my portfolio.

I'm very curious what other holdings our MelGross rounds out his portfolio with, since he's a very canny investor.

I don't think that's a valid point in this discussion. The difference between the two numbers is probably less than a percent. I don't believe that the numbers shipped and the numbers sold are significantly different, unless you want to suggest that there may be tens of millions of them scattered around all the stores as excess inventory. That's far too expensive to be allowed to happen.

Hey JeffDM, maybe Mackilroy works for GM, Ford or Chrysler.

I wouldn't call it a common tactic for many companies, but large companies have used this method as a marketing strategy to convince potential customers that their product is doing better than it really is. A poster --I believe on this site-- who is a Sears employee made a comment about how they keep getting shipments of Zunes in despite not being able to move the product.

IMO, the Zune is an ideal product to use with this marketing strategy. The majority of people use Windows (and know very little about Macs) and may make their decision on the popularity of the player.

"I actually think M$ might be in trouble in the long term. Apple's marketshare is growing..."

The genie is out of the bottle. Apple's market share will continue to grow and Vista has the potential to be such a humongous disaster that the Zune fiasco will look like a tea party.

I've been using WIndows Vista since RC1 and I have to say that the current version is quite stable. I haven't tried to install many 3rd-party on it but I found that there were some things that were quite nice* about it.

Disclaimer: Nice as in a nice improvement over WinXP.

Yes. I have the EXACT same sentiment.

Unfortunately for Apple, Vista is just enough better than XP to keep people sucking off of MS's teet.

-Clive

I'm glad someone agrees, I thought I was going to be hung to dry with my pro-Vista statements. :-)

i've been using vista for a while, and yes i will admit it's more stable than XP in the PCs i've used it in... however, it wont get me anywhere close to switching from mac to PC...

i just bought an iPod video today to replace my (now dead sigh) 20gb 4G iPod, and had the choice of getting a zune... it was kind of funny actually to see the big huge stack of zunes just sitting there in their boxes and seeing that the ipod stack was nearly empty from all the iPods selling

I think it's a little disingenious to compare one model of Zune with the entire iPod product line.

I am by no means a fan of the Zune, there are 7 iPods in my family and hope that the Zune fails miserably. The Zune represents a threat to cause Apple to push the iPod towards mediocrity to compete on worthless features.

The problem is this: The iPod 30GB is not even close to being the best selling iPod. By comparing the Zune to All iPods, it makes it look like iPod outsells the Zune by 25:1. I think this is way off base. In actuality the iPod 30GB may only be outselling the Zune by 5:1 or 6:1.

There are alot of Apple haters out there and if Microsoft introduces 3 or 4 Zune (Nano type) flash players and a Zune (Shuffle type) player, then the battle may heat up overnight quite considerably!

I know Apple does not breakout individual product sales info, but does anyone have a real grasp on how many iPod 30GB sells per quarter?

Talk about lowered expectations. Good lord.

Ballmer makes Gil Amelio's time at Apple look exciting.

My 7-year old uses the phrase "pretty awesome." Lots of his pals use the same phrase. I have never heard him (or, now that I think of it, anyone other than Steve Jobs) say "insanely great."

I think "insanely great" is a pretty awesome comment.

Exactly where are you getting your info that a good number of teens hate Apple? Judging by the percentage of teens who own (and love) iPods, I'd think it'd be just the opposite.

So where are these hordes of Apple-hating teens?


--N

According to a slightly older story regarding Black Friday week at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6140649.html "SanDisk tied Apple Computer, with 39 percent of all MP3 players sold for the week, but the similarities end there. iPods led all manufacturers with 66 percent of dollars spent in the category, while SanDisk had 18 percent...

Those figures do not include iPods sold directly from Apple, which does not release sales figures from Apple.com or Apple stores...

Microsoft's much-ballyhooed MP3 player, the Zune, captured 2.1 percent of units sold, tying with Disney and coming in behind Apple, SanDisk, Creative and Memorex.

It's always good to drag out this mockup off the web. It will P*WN every "mid-high end portable media player out there" !!!!! ...Palm-sized. Touchscreen without smudging up the scratch- and smudge-resistant screen. On screen controls fade out gracefully after you adjust it. Of course, a Hold switch somewhere to enjoy Pirates without accidental interruption... iCal, Contacts, all looking great --- like the original Palm and HandSprings, I put one of those scratch-resistant films on, zero air bubbles, 100% protection. I'd pop the Palm out with one hand, and no need to use the stylus, just press the buttons and press on screen with my nails. Very useful when you are at a public phone (payphone) with the handset against your shoulder, or with the other hand fumbling with a mobile phone. Or if you're out and about and you just gotta check for sure your appointment time/ address. I'd expect this iPod widescreen to offer that kind of usability, in addition to its primary function as a media player, alongside announcement of content from Universal, WB, Dreamworks, Sony/Columbia/Tristar... Materials tech is advanced enough now that you can have a clear, sharp, bright, touchable, scratch and finger-oil -proof screen.



My gut instinct is that most of the work has gone into usability -- how it holds in the hand, how it feels, how inputting text(?) may happen - stylus? tapping?? And most most importantly, materials -- no more smudge, scratch, OMFG screen cracked!!111!!, complaints and class actions suits. They want to get it right, right off the bat, and dropship a bigger, better, clearer, etc. model mid-2007. We'll see it Macworld2007 January or so. A separate press event possibly, alongside the iPhone. Or iPhone and TouchPod at Macworld2007.

OK. TouchPod sounds terrible. Brainstorming... [insert spinning beachball]
Oh great Oracle of marketing Naming, please bestow upon us Steve's Grace and Brilliance
Let the RDF Shine like a thousand Suns in the everblue sky...

iPod touch
iPod notouch
TouchMe iPod
TickleMe iPod
SquirtablePod
SquirtPod
vPod
iPod video GT800X
iPod video touch
iPod wide
iPod v
iPod maxi (hmm.. sounds like a tampon)
iPod widescreen
iPod max (hmm... sounds like a soft drink)
iPod max . "Max screen, Zero buttons"
iPod cinema
iPod cinemascope
iPod movie
..............................