Zune closes out November with 2 percent market share - Page 3

And just how do you know that?

Apple's marketshare has been fairly steady the past year or so. But, even then, it has been moving up a point or so every few months.

If that has stopped, that would show somwthing. Also, we would have to see the figures for all of the other players in the catagory, as well as how many people decided to buy the HD Zune because of its unique features, rather than a flash player.

Only then can we say where sales are coming from.

That's EXACTLY why I used it!

That was the point I was making.

People will say that the Zunes numbers are low, so that proved it sucks and will never make it.

But then those same people will look at Apple's low numbers, and say it proves that most people don't know what they are doing, and are just following the leader.

It's a bit more involved than that.

I don't think it matters that it's MS. They are just another company in this space.

Indeed, they are not even a hardware company, except in an offhand way.

I happen to think that the Zune is the Doom.

But, who knows. People are strange.

I'm not assuming anything in that statement. I just gave the numbers. It's about an eighth of what Apple did. Where it came from, no one seems to know clearly yet.


Apple would LOVE to have 50% margins on a hardware item. It just isn't happening. The Pro models do a bit better than 30%, and the rest go lower, to a bit over 18% for the lowest Mini. Not that that isn't very good! The stores are seeing maybe 10%, no more.


We don't know what MS's margins are on the Zune. They can be anywhere from )% to your -20%. We just don't know. MS says they are breaking even. No reason not to believe that.


MS is different from other companies.

Their software has margins for them of up to 90% (OEM).

They get into business's that they think are going to be important down the road. They can afford to l9se money for as long as it takes.

Look at the games division. Before XBox, it was small, but making a profit.

After XBox it has been losing $1.2 billion a year.

But, MS can afford that. They think it's going to be manditory to be in that market, with the advances in gameplay over the internet, as well as streaming entertainment of other kinds.

They will wait it out.

The Zune won't cost nearly as much to maintain.

They can afford that too!

No one else can.

I, for one, hope that MS starts doing better sales with it's ZUne and starts selling more models. Not that I'd ever buy one, but Apple seriously needs someone with deep pockets to keep it motivated in bringing the best out of the iPod.

The $64,000 question, of course, is how this compares to the release of the 1G iPod. Well, I've found those numbers. The short answer: 1G iPod did at least 5 to 10 times better than Zune.

In the first two months following its release (Nov/Dec 2001), the 1G iPod sold 125,000 units, or 62,500/month (source: Apple quarterly earnings release). In 2001, the worldwide MP3 player market was approximately 3.5 million units, or around 300,000/month (source: In-Stat/MDR chart, Feb 2002).

Assume holiday sales rates are 2x the rates of the quarters preceding them.* That means that MP3 players were selling to the tune of 600,000 units/month during the 2001 holiday season. I will also conservatively assume that iPod had a credible worldwide launch.**

Even under these conservative assumptions, the initial iPod captured over 10% of the market, or 5 times better than Zune's 2%.

However, as melgross and others have argued, Zune isn't currently competing in the flash market. They say the relevant market is the HD player market, of which Zune got about 10%. Of course, iPod also was only competing in the HD market initially (then, as now, most players were flash based), so by the same argument the 1G iPod might have captured as much as 50% of the HD market. Again, Zune looks bad in comparison.

But it gets better. Recall that the 1G iPod was only compatible with Macintosh when released!!! Generously assume that Apple had 5% market share, and assume Mac users buy MP3 players at a higher rate than Windows users (say, 2-3 times higher). Then the iPod was competing for at most 10-15% of the market. So, again by the melgross et al argument, iPod captured between 67 to 100% of the relevant market when it was released. That is up to 10 times better than Zune...and that is still assuming that almost all Mac users buy HD players instead of flash players.

But it gets even better. The iPod cost $399 and had significant positive margins. Zune has negative margins. This means that Zune has much more favorable pricing conditions at launch than the 1G iPod did, but it's still doing 5-10 times worse. Put another way, the growth prospects of Zune look worse than the growth prospects of the 1G iPod did. This is because future generations of Zunes will eventually need to make a profit, which means they either have to increase their price relative to competing MP3 players, or they have to add capacity/features more slowly than competing MP3 players.

In summary, the 1G iPod did at least 5 to 10 times better than Zune on release. Furthermore, even though it was already doing 5 to 10 times better, the 1G iPod still had better growth prospects than Zune because it wasn't relying on the ultimately unsustainable crutch of money-losing prices to try to boost sales.

And if you still have any doubts, consider this: at current rates, Zune will sell maybe 300,000 units during the holidays. This is only 2.5 times the number of units the 1G iPod sold in the same timeframe, even though the relevant MP3 player market is over 300 times larger (overall MP3 player mkt has grown at least 20 times, and Zune is selling for 90% of the world's computers rather than 5%). So Zune may be doing as much as 100 times worse than the original iPod (I told you the assumptions I was making above were conservative!!!).

*This number is in line with the seasonal trends in iPod sales - holiday quarter sales rates are usually around 100% higher than sales rates for the quarters preceding them.

** This is unclear from the press releases, and this assumption is likely to seriously bias downwards our iPod market share estimates (since iPod generally does better in the US than worldwide).

Well...at least in the UK...oh, and Canada...oh, and France...oh, and...but that's only the rest of the world...

You are confused; please reread the post. I specifically said up to 50% above cost, which implies a margin of 33% or less.

In their most recent 10-K, Apple reported overall gross margins of 29%. This includes A LOT of sales of lower margin items (i.e., iPods), and a much smaller amount of sales of high margin items (software). Overall it is not unreasonable to assume average margins of 25-30% across the Macintosh line, which implies pricing 33-43% above cost. Note that I did not include the Mini in my analysis, but rather the MacBook and the iMac (which are undoubtedly the median Macs, in terms of price).

Overall, the sample iMac/MacBook prices I threw out were actually a bit high because margins are based on the marginal revenue Apple gets for a given Mac, but I was basing the prices off the suggested retail price of each Mac (which is higher due to edu discounts, promotions, the retailer cut, etc).


Wrong. It is well known that Zune is a money loser. Microsoft does not expect it to make money until at least 2008 (see http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...lines-business). A common estimate is that they are losing around $50/player (see, e.g., http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/09/...g.ms.partners/), which works out to a little under 20%. Probably the most telling fact is that Microsoft already said they were going to lose money back in July (see the first article I posted), and at that time they still thought they were going to be able to sell it for $299.


Wrong - eventually shareholders get angry and demand changes.


The goal of XBox 360 is to break even (fortunately, this goal has been aided by Sony's overly ambitious PS3 design, though my guess at this point is that Wii will beat them both). You are mistaken if you believe MSFT is planning to lose money on every successive generation of XBox just for the sake of maintaining a bigger market presence.


Please stop spreading the very silly myth that no other company can afford to fund as much as Microsoft (i.e., that it is the most profitable company in the world). This is easily debunked by looking at any financial website. GE's net earnings are about 30% higher than Microsoft's. Exxon-Mobil's net earnings are about 200% more than Microsoft's. Either of these companies could "afford" to take much bigger losses for the sake of maintaining presence than Microsoft could.

The simple fact of the matter is that Microsoft is a big, mature company with limited opportunity for revenue growth. The advantage of this is that they have a large, predictable profit stream out of which they can take (stupid) risks to fund money losing products like Zune. The disadvantage is that they are under constant pressure to show earnings growth, and they can't do that by selling even more Windows and Office licenses to an already saturated market. The only way to boost earnings then is to cut deadweight loss, which means that within the next couple years, either (a) Zune's price gets set so that it no longer loses money or (b) Zune eventually gets thrown overboard. I'm betting on (a).

I agree that Zune is beneficial for Apple customers. Who knows, its existence may have helped solidify Apple's choice to cut the 5.5G iPod price from $299 to $249. But from the perspective of a MSFT shareholder (such as myself), Zune is ridiculous, and it's simply a symbol of the poor decision making of MSFT execs these days as they desperately try to do something to grow the business beyond the Windows/Office monopoly. Why do you think the shares are lower now (in nominal terms, no less!) than they were 5 years ago?

Selling a product at a loss while still failing to gain significant marketshare and tarnishing the brand name is not a recipe for long term profits. It's a recipe for losing money. If management can't think of anything better to spend money on then silly ventures like this, they should just return it back to the shareholders (through even more stock buybacks or higher dividends). I can do much better just investing the profits in an S&P 500 index fund.

One would think so, given MSFT not really performing at all for the past few years. But the stock is interesting.

3 months: MSFT gains 11%, S&P500 7%, Nasdaq 8%, DowJones 7%
6 months: MSFT gains 30%, S&P500 13%, Nasdaq 13%, DowJones 12%
1 year: MSFT gains 11%, S&P500 11%, Nasdaq 7%, DowJones 13%
5 years: MSFT loses 12%, S&P500 +23%, Nasdaq +19%, DowJones +20%

The graph here says volumes: 8) (Image) (5years %change)

The interesting thing is that no matter when you bought MSFT in the last 5 years, you're only seeing some realistic gains in the past 3-12 months. MSFT seems to be on a strong uptick in the past 3-12 months. ...Actually, where is this coming from? Interesting...

Just to satisfy my curiousity, I worked out: if you bought MSFT (any number of shares) at around $23*,
Bought 1 year ago: Average return per annum is 11%, not bad. Beats savings and a lot of mutual funds.
Bought 2 years ago: Average return per annum is 5%, okay, not great.
Bought 3 years ago: Average return per annum is 4%, hmmm...
Bought 4 years ago: Average return per annum is 3%, not great at all.
Bought 5 years ago: Average return per annum is -12%, sucks a55.

(2-4 year rough calculations based on GoogleFinance, working not shown)
*$23 is taken as around the 5-year moving average, roughly.

To complete for those with AAPL:

1 month return is -9%
3 month return is 13%
6 month Average return per annum is 76% (projected by doubling previous 6 month gain of 38%)*
1 year Average return per annum is 11%
2 year Average return per annum is 78%**
3 year Average return per annum is 245%**
4 year Average return per annum is 253%**
5 year Average return per annum is 137%**

(Rough calculations from GoogleFinance charts)
*I know, you can't just project it to the future that way
**Yes, this is REAL

One more post, getting exhausted. It is interesting to note that it is about 5 years since the tragic events of 9/11 in NYC, so generally what we see in the past 5 years for most stocks is the recovery from the dot-com bust and 9/11. Obviously if we are looking at stock y'all got say in 1998-2001, then, well, different story, as I don't have to remind you.

Looking at the Indexes is worth noting, assuming you bought "tracking stock" of these indexes*, 5 years ago:
S&P500 = 4.6% gain per annum
Nasdaq = 3.8% gain per annum
DowJones = 4.0% gain per annum

*I don't know how this works exactly but I calculated the above anyways.

Not fantastic from a gain per annum measure, but possibly better than savings and term deposits since the 2002-2005 reserve bank rates (and hence savings and term deposit rates for Cash) for the US were sooo low.

Who knew that at the end of 2001, 5 years ago, one should have just dumped all your investment cash into AAPL.
$1,000 would be ~$7,823 now. $10,000 would be ~$78,300 now. $100,000 would be ~$783,000 now.

Okay peace out. If anyone finds errors in my calculations, please re-post correct ones, I won't have the energy to go back and re-calculate.

Comparing market share across a broad market like computers to a vertical market niche like mp3 players is asinine. Really, there's no correlation. If you want to do a comparison, at least compare all music players (inc tape, MD, CD, Vinyl) to computers.



Bearing in mind they were already past 2% with PowerPC that's simply not true. I don't think most people really care what CPU is in there.


I don't even own an iPod so I'm not sure what you're getting at.


No, no, no. Xbox accounts for about 15% of console sales worldwide as pointed out earlier in the thread. Do keep up.



Simple. You're on an Apple website. We'd be kind of nuts to be rooting for the competition.


Hint: it's not just about the hardware. It amazes me how PC nerds obsess about the minutiae of their hack boxes when they have to put up with crap like Windows Wireless Networking or endless Wizards.

Heh. Agreed. ...Said "hack boxes" and "minutiae" (like overclocking) can be fun though. Not to say that your point is not valid.

The "need" to hold a market share higher than MS has various reasons. The first is the "underdog" thing - for years Macs and Mac users being sidelined and crushed by the monopolies. So, admittedly, a lot of people look at the MS Zune Poon, and go, na nan a nan an na, suck sh1t !!!11!!1!!

The more "mature" people interested in Apple and Tech and stuff would recognise that the iPod market share, mindshare, and the revenue and profits generated from the iPod and iTunes Store are very key pillars of Apple now, which has enabled Apple to progress strongly on the Mac side of things and maintain, a at worst, a competitive operating system, at best, a superb and brilliant operating system - evolving almost every year while reducing bloat and maintaining decent levels of backward compatibility. The iPod phenomenon has also 1. Given Apple the confidence to go Intel and offer the ability to run Windows and PC Games(!) on Mac hardware, 2. Given Apple the ability to operate in markets outside of the medium-big enterprise, 3. Given Apple the confidence to continue with its core design, operating and marketing philosophy, when it comes to computers.

The current model is also the quietest production desktop computer. Maybe most computer geeks generally don't care about noise, but most computer users aren't computer geeks.

Besides, was the iMac ever in its history a high performance machine? I think you have your proportions messed up too, I don't think "most" owners were pissed. Probably just the vocal minority.


That's simply not true. In most cases, it's probably just one app. For new buyers, it's often a fall-back in case they don't like OS X. Switching platforms is a major step.

You come on this site once a month to troll. Is that somehow smarter?

And as I said, it's a stupid comparison. You're comparing the market for bread based products including bagles and donuts with wooden hatstand sales. It's that far out of left field stupid.



Again, simply not true but do continue believing it. Santa is real too.


You're confusing 'most people' with geeks. Most people really don't care as long as it performs the task at hand. They've already decided they want a Mac for what it does, not how the electrons are shoved about. 'Most people' are also perfectly fine with laptops - they outsell desktop computers - and apart from the FSB speed there's no real shortcoming in the iMac since they use desktop components for everything else.

Of course the advantage of using a mobile CPU is that it's quieter and cooler which is one of the design goals behind the iMac. If you want noisy and hotter, look elsewhere. Most people buying an iMac probably want the former rather than the latter.



Do you have a Zune?

Just because I choose not to own or use a particular product doesn't mean I don't have an informed opinion on it. I have quite an opinion on nuclear reactors too but haven't got around to purchasing one yet. So, are you part of the 2% of the HDD mp3 player market that bought a Zune or are you just expressing an opinion on something you don't even use too?


Why guess when you've actual sales figures. See http://news.softpedia.com/news/Micro...ny-41026.shtml

These aren't estimates from an analyst, those are actual sales. End of Q3 2006, Xbox had 15%, 360 20%. Sony lost 5% of it's share (ps2) in that period which isn't surprising bearing in mind PS3 hadn't shipped. Wii hadn't either.

Didn't take 10 seconds to google for actual sales figures instead of analyst wishful thinking.



No, I don't work for Apple but yes the iPod having so high a marketshare and being profitable to many of us Macheads is like winnng something - the lottery or North Sea Oil revenue. It keeps Apple profitable so they can spend the iPod cash on more important stuff we actually care about rather than fluffy shit like mp3 players. It's the kind of thing Microsoft would love obviously to break out from their two products that actually are profitable.

Competition is an interesting one for Mac owners since we only buy our computers from one manufacturer it doesn't really matter what AMD, Intel, Nvidia or ATi do to compete against each other since we're mostly 'stuck' (and that's too strong a word since at the moment the machines rock) with what Apple gives us. As long as they progress, it's not so important. It's not like we're ever going to be slower than PCs these days is it?

I also think technological changes in some stupid competitive war between two sparing partners often leads to some particularly asstastic hacks to provide extra marketing points rather than actually stepping back and doing what's right. See the Pentium 4 for a perfect example. See the current Quad chips for another.




Plainly not true since 'all users' simply don't. 3 Macs here. None of them have Bootcamp. I've one Mac with VirtualPC though for the sole purpose of running different versions of IE. I'm a web developer so have to check that anything I've done displays ok in IE 6 and 7. If I wasn't a web developer, or Microsoft continued to support IE on the Mac, I'd have absolutely no need for Windows.

As has been said before...

"Windows. It's the New Classic"

You use it when you really really have to but when you've not used it for months you wonder why it's taking up disk space and delete it. Most of the switchers I know have gradually weaned themselves off of Windows apps after switching when they realize MacOSX is a much nicer place to stay in.

Maybe before you do any more posting about "fanboys" and "idiots" you could take note that you, by far, are the most emotionally jacked up person posting on this thread.

It's a growing phenomena, as far as I can see: the reverse Apple snob. They're so filled with withering contempt for how "smug" Apple users are they go out of their way to find Apple enthusiasts so they can start to rant about "fan boys" and how all the Apple zealots are so damn full of themselves they can hardly stand it.

The sane thing to do, of course, would simply be to avoid discussions that don't interest you and whose participants you find distasteful.

I agree that many people buy blindly. Shout your anguish unto the Cosmos. Curse God and die. But many people - generally people who are unaware of slashdot - make educated choices and buy iMacs. You may not believe this, but some people are both smart and uninterested in buying the most powerful, when easiest will do just as well, if not better.

Being an educated consumer means buying what you need and what suits you best. The best specs are usually not all that relevant to most consumers, and most people really want to do a few things, and high-demand programs are largely absent in these computers. Furthermore, things like the iSight make the computer do more, rather than do the same old things, but with better graphics. Think PS3 versus Wii and get back to me in 5 years.

Obsessing about processor speed or GPU is a real geek thing to do, since most of the programs on most platforms are very responsive regardless. You may very well be educated, but your lust for technical excellence is not driven by knowledge.

Then do it; this is a debate, not a bragging contest.

And stop bashing design. Beauty affects you every day of your life, and the elegance and coolness of Apples does affect the way people feel and work, even if it is subconscious.

But it's not a valid comparison.

With computers, Apple sells mid to high end laptops, AIO desktops, Workstation class high end desktops, a rackmount server and a small form factor PC. That's a very small proportion of the computer market. Their share of the computer market is therefore small because they do not sell computers into every market segment. On unit sales alone they're going to be way down in share because they don't sell into the budget market or into the office worker market.

Apple are actually fairly successful in the markets they choose to compete in. For instance, laptop sales aimed at college students or Workstations for video pros.

Saying they have 2% of the computer market and that they're therefore unsuccessful is stupid since they aren't even attempting to address the whole of the market unlike say Dell or HP and the market is HUGE by comparison to just hard disk based audio players.

You're comparing a broad market with a narrow vertical market. The dynamics are totally different.


No it didn't.


No I'm not. I'm educated. I really don't care what the CPU is, just what it does. Geeks care about what it is. Educated people care about what it does.



I've read the specs. I know what the Zune does and doesn't do. No way would I choose one over an iPod even if I could run the Zune software anyway.

Sure Microsoft could start giving them away but that would be pretty stupid (there that word again) as they'd be losing $250 a shot instead of just $50.


Nice logic. So your opinion is that we should be buying Zunes, or accepting freebies, even though they have less features than an iPod and don't work with Macs, because more people have PCs and MS are likely to compete by losing money when they can't compete on features?

Is it any wonder we're rooting for Apple?


Well, that can be answered now. Apple's share dropped by 0.8% after the Zune launch so since Sansa's, Creative's and the other PlaysForSure partners share dropped it's safe to say not many iPods were replaced by Zunes. More likely, Zunes replaced old PFS players. I bet Creative are blissfully happy with Microsoft just now.


But they aren't. Sony are killing Sony in the console race and so far PS3 sales haven't been going long enough to create any impression.


No shit sherlock. The OS with the 90% of the market gets an upgrade and it'll be the largest upgrade in history. How do you come up with these insights?



Go on then. Sales figures, not analyst predictions.



Of course they do. That's why they're called 'Apple Computer Inc.'.


Of course they are. WTF am I typing on if it's not Apple hardware?



It's both. The entire point of owning a Mac isn't just the OS. Who else makes a stylish all in one quiet computer with an OS tailored for it? I can well understand why someone might want a Mac Mini for Windows if they wanted to run Windows - there's nothing that size that cheap. I was thinking of getting a couple to run Linux on as office servers to be honest.

It is interesting that the "reverse Apple snob" as I see it is someone that has come from the PC world and now, fearing being lost in perceived Mac "fandom", continues a mix of PC and Mac use, iPod and non-iPod use. Said people would claim steadfastly, "I'm not a Mac user, I just use Macs"

I've been researching something to run Torrents and H.264 or Xvid Encoding round the clock, and the Mac Mini is perfect for this. I priced out some Dells and even looked at homebake small-form-factor solutions, and nothing comes close to a Mac Mini running OSX and WINXP2pro via Parallels.

It would be the workhorse computer, something silent and cool (heatwise, sex-wise--there I said it) and low power drawing since it is left on 24/7.

This would free up my main AMD64 rig to go 2GB, RAID0 2x7200rpm SATA 80gb drives, 6600GT 128MB VRAM for WINXP2pro latest PC gaming and web surfing when not playing games. Maybe a 7600GT or 7900GS for a bit more smoothness.

A PS2/USB/DVI keyboard-display-switch thingy (KVM) and I'm sorted out ready to rock. PC+Mac... And I don't need to go and harass either PCheads or Macheads on the forums.

Damn. Belkin doesn't have a proper DVI dual-switch solution.
http://www.aten.com seems to be where its at...

Since this has been a bone of some contention here, this is how many consoles have actually been sold worldwide in the PS2- Xbox1- Gamecube generation:

Xbox1- 24 million

"Speaking with GameDaily BIZ, a Microsoft representative responded to Pachter's analysis, stating that the "Xbox (V1) is a robust platform with more than 24 million units in living rooms..."

10/16/06 http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=83846


Playstation 2 - 112 million

"Tetsuhiko pointed out that the company had shipped 230 million PS-family machines worldwide since 2000, with PS2 amounting to 112 million systems and PSP totaling 22.9 million systems."

11/06/06 http://cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_11290.html

(*Note that's 112 million PS2s shipped not sold. However, that does not make a huge difference (a couple of million consoles perhaps) as retailers generally cannot afford to hold a tremendous number of consoles in inventory. 20 million consoles in inventory would be an entire year's supply for PS2; I haven't heard of any retailers who keep a year's supply lying around).


Gamecube - 21.2 million

as of 09/30/06 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_GameCube


Adding it all up, the total worldwide console installed base for the PS2-Xbox1-Gamecube generation looks to be about 155 million consoles (I was generous and knocked a couple million off of the PS2 figure to reflect the shipped not sold factor). Given that, worldwide marketshare for that generation is:

Playstation 2: 71%
Xbox 1: 15%
Gamecube: 14%

The '34% worldwide marketshare' figure being trumpted by some in the Xbox fan contingent seems to be not of installed base, but looks more like current quarterly sales figures for Xbox1 and Xbox 360 combined, during a time of constrained PS3 and Wii supplies.

That figure does not reflect worldwide installed base in any fashion (there'd have to be ~45 million Xbox console sales in the past few years that no one knew about, even MS's own representatives, lol), but only current quarterly sales. It is also very reasonable to expect that percentage will drop substantially as PS3 and Wii launch supply woes ease and production ramps up.

Hope that helped. 8)


.

What I can't understand is: How does a company that attracts approx. 120 million visitors to its websites in a month (story posted later by AI), getting TONS of free publicity for its new product as the "killer" of an existing mega-hit product that sells in the millions, and pricing it below cost, manage to sell not more than a few hundred thousand?!

I think MSFT has toally lost its marketing acumen.

Someone working for the Zune division and is halfway smart would be foolish not to be considering bailing right about now, before his/her resume gets permanently scarred.

This thing is finished.

Sorry to be replying to my own post, but I meant: (1) "approx 117 million," and (2) "story posted earlier by AI."

It is interesting to see how zune will survive and how ipod could maintain its dominance. But it does not stop there, I can feel that the computer industry will change a lot in the coming near future. Thus the same question will apply for the os, i.e how windows could maintain its dominance while we could see a significant growth of osx user, especially since mac comes with intel flavour.

From time to time, apple has adopting the industry standard (software and hardware wise) thus the mac os user would be able to work in the pc world. Now mac even embraces windows os, thus we can see that apple is closing its gap to pc and its reducing reasons to be afraid of using apple computers and of wasting money for machine which is not compatible with pc world. With this strategy apple has quite succeeded in encouraging people to try mac. Also the pricing of the mac products is very competitive compared to the pc market. Only the HD display is still bit too high.

With the last release of macbook/macbook pro plus other mac lines, apple has grown its market share thru the consumer and small office segments. It is not the time yet for Apple to push corporate/enterprise segment to switch to mac osx. But the penetration of mac hardware could have a good start since in the near future employees of corporates could bargain to the IT dept to have mac with windows installed thus allowed the IT dept easily maintain its job. Also, it would depend on how good leopard and bootcamp in implementing the dual both concept, especially in supporting vista by providing the device drivers. If the IT dept does not like the mac osx, it could simply installed the vista solely on the mac hardware given the mac have a complete device drivers.

Thinking about this, it reminds me how wintel machines had pushed mainframe computers (IBM) to the corner. In the late of 70s, who will think that IBM will lose its crown someday. Thus I believe that there would never be an immortal king of technology. The king would change from time to time thus it is not impossible that MS could lose its crown if it does not have a right innovation and focus on more clear vision other than windows os and office apps. I think Apple has a great opportunity in the coming 2-3 years to strengthen its existence since it still have a lot of innovation it its sleeve and some of it even waiting in the pipeline, namely, iPhone, iTV, next generation iPod, better macs, etc.

In the leading edge sector, to be able to grow is only thru innovation which is acceptable for the given era. I still remember the Kodak case which had developed the digital camera but in the wrong era in which there's no support from the related technology such as printer, media card, the pc itself, etc. Thus the great innovation still could be a failure if released in a wrong time. BUT it would be even worse if the company is not good in an innovation.

Bill gates would never be bankrupt and MS is a rich company but it is dying as a leading edge technology company. We will see the destiny of MS in the coming 5 years. The only thing could save MS business is the right man who is good in innovation and have a clear vision of future computing world. And the condition is becoming more critical since Bill Gates will leave the company. I think Bill Gates himself realizes that he is not good in the vision and software but he is a good businessman that come up with a good business model and strategy such as forcing pc manufacturers to pre-installed windows, etc.

Again, it is interesting to see the coming near future of the computer industry.

Bingo. I myself was pretty suprised that the Zune didn't do better than it did, between the massive ad budget, the Microsoft name hype, the 'iPod killer' (lol) hype, fresh new kid on the block status, and the subsidized 'we're gonna take a loss on this' pricing.

I'm sure MS will eventually improve their iPod and iTunes knockoffs (ditch the crap-brown color, get rid of the weird 'points' system for the Zune Store), but even then, there's no compelling reason to switch, and a lot of good reasons not to.

So Zune ends up being just another 'me too' product in the space, aka so what?, in the consumer's eyes. \


.

I'd actually say the figures are wrong... although I did note subtly that they said HD MP3 players...
Lets just look at MP3 players...
Apple had sold 67,635,000 iPods last time I checked (and will have sold more since then).
Sandisk, Creative, Sony... generics have all sold quite a few million MP3 players.

Microsoft has sold less than 1 million Zunes. If it's 1 million by June 2007 (8 months)... I'd guess that'd mean they are selling about 125 000 a month to make that mark, so have probably only sold about 250 000 so-far.

Now, the magic. EVEN IF they had sold 1000 000, can someone tell me what 1000 000 is as a percentage of 67,635,000?

We're talking Apple having sold 68x the number of MP3 players that Microsoft has. Microsoft has a 1.48% market share if Apple were their only competitor. But they're not!

And Microsoft hasn't sold 1000 000 Zunes, its sold around 250 000.
I'd guess there's around 100 000 000 MP3 players in the market. How does this make M$ look...
250 000 Zunes sold, 100 000 000 MP3 players.

0.25% market share of the MP3 player market! NOTHING! That's more than about $100 000 of marketing for each .1 of a %.

No. Installed base is not market share. They are specific terms that mean specific things, and should not be confused with each other.

And the report did say 9% of HDD players sold in the US on November were because that's the market it is in. This is a very good start month for Zune despite not having a flash-based player. I imagine MS may have sold more Zunes than Cingular sold ROKRs.

No. Considering the hype and resources brought to bear by the world's largest tech company, it is, at best, a very mediocre start month for Zune. \


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hat's not saying anything.

Unfortunately, seemingly everything that Microsoft does starts with small with a product with a laughably low acceptance rate, and many of them grow to be major market forces that no competitor can afford to ignore.

The problem is, when Microsoft can't leverage Windows or Office to their advantage, they have to compete on a level playing field. And when they have to do that, they don't do nearly as well.

Thus, MS's success in this venture is far from assured. It's more likely that they'll keep throwing money at a 'me too' product that doesn't come anywhere near dominating the market, and loses money for them. Basically the Xbox model, redux. Color me unimpressed. \

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In business, nothing is ever assured. Microsoft has plenty of duds, but the first generation of a product is not an indicator by which to evaluate the future of one of their products. Often they don't hit it big until the third or fourth generation, with or without Windows or Office leverage.

Let's just say their batting average has been less than great without Windows or Office leverage. And in the consumer electronics space, they're at a disadvantage, since they do not place top priority on design or ease-of-use... Apple's strengths, and core reasons why the iPod has been a break-out success.

MS is playing catch-up, plain and simple, and in a space where they have no long-term aces-in-the-hole, other than being able to lose a whole lot of money. That buys them a big marketing budget and the ability to price at a loss, but even with that, 9% of the HD player market and 2% overall is all they get?? Blah.

That's what happens when you're the follower in a market space. MS needs to innovate to have a chance, and its just not in their corporate DNA to do much of that. They're a fast follower, 'me too' company... its what they do.

And it works... when they can leverage Windows or Office.






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i hope their market share hits 100%... esspecially since they lose money on each one.

besides fixing broken MS shit employs me and gives me steady work, no outsourcing threat in that field.

I don't think that argument works. MS hasn't necessarily placed top priority on design or ease-of-use on Windows, but Windows is not a market failure.


MS has almost always been a catch-up company, and I don't remember Microsoft ever innovating, but they are there. I don't understand why you say Zune isn't leveraging Windows. It sounds like some sort of BS phrase. I don't know what product leverages Office.