I guess that means that the Zune did have a substantial initial splash on the HDD player market. Add a flash device and a few refinements and they may have a sustainable product line.
You are both right, the problem is that you aren't talking about what Melgross was talking about. Your links appear to use figures that combine flash and hard drive players as one market. Melgross was referring specifically to the hard drive player subset of the market.
In speaking to AppleInsider, NPD analyst Steve Baker said the most recent share data was compiled from a more comprehensive list of retail sources that factored in iPod sales at Apple's own stores, and is therefore more representative of the Microsoft player's overall market share.
Said analyst also admitted to AppleInsider that their previous report was TOTAL GARBAGE since it did not take into account THE 100 PLUS APPLE RETAIL STORES THAT SELL IPODS. What frackwits these analysts are. They don't even deserve the dirt on the floormats of their BMWs... Oooh, I'm bitchy today.
No, no, no...... Zune got 9+% the first WEEK it was on the market. It quickly, and appears quietly, slipped to 1.9 - 2.0% the next week. - and has been going south since.
Do you even read what people write before replying? Mel said that Zune got 9-11% of the Hard Drive mp3 market -- and this is not just in the first week, at least not according to the arcitcle. You would know this if you had read the article.
The point that Mel makes about Zune is a valid one. The Zune is not competing against the Nano or the Shuffle. I would submit that it isn't even competing against the 80GB iPod. So the most accurate comparison for sales would be to look at the sales numbers for the Zune against 30GB iPod (and any other mp3 players of similar specs). Since we weren't told any of these sort of numbers, we ought to look at the closest numbers that we do have. Thus the 2% numbers are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. If MS entered the market with the range of products that the iPod currently has (three or four flash players and a couple of hard drive players), they would likely show in the 9-11% range for all mp3 players.
We can safely assume that they will add new players to their one Zune in the coming months. If so, then we should see the Zune player as a real contender capable of capturing a lot of the market right away. MS is not just going to sit on this one player. You'll see another player -- probably flash-based -- quickly; and come next Christmas, the Zune line-up will likely be about the same as the iPod's. And will you still be laughing if they are releasing a new product every couple of months all during the next year? -- they will get a lot of press, and consistently over the whole year. This will give them mind-share if nothing else. Right now, no-one really knows what a Zune is (except tech-geeks). What will MS's sales numbers be when the rest of the population finds out that there's a new MS player out there (and with multiple feature sets)? Don't be lulled by the Zune's brown colour: Apple is not!
The point that Mel makes about Zune is a valid one. The Zune is not competing against the Nano or the Shuffle. I would submit that it isn't even competing against the 80GB iPod. So the most accurate comparison for sales would be to look at the sales numbers for the Zune against 30GB iPod (and any other mp3 players of similar specs). Since we weren't told any of these sort of numbers, we ought to look at the closest numbers that we do have. Thus the 2% numbers are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. If MS entered the market with the range of products that the iPod currently has (three or four flash players and a couple of hard drive players), they would likely show in the 9-11% range for all mp3 players.
This is a great post! You and Melgross should have written this article!
Does anyone know the November sales figures of the 30Gig iPod?!
Yeah. But that's Microsoft-think in a nutshell... 'feature-itis'.
They honestly think cramming in features like WiFi will be the magic bullet that slays the iPod. Which really shows that they don't even 'get' the iPod in the first place. The iPod was about design and ease-of-use, not cramming in every little seldom-used feature.
With that lack of understanding, they'll never beat the iPod. Gotta love Microsoft-think.
.
Not really. The iPod has many more features than the Zune. Zune lacks games, calendar, contacts, a clock, alarms, an equalizer and you can't even use it as an external drive. So it has a couple of features the iPod doesn't but lacks a lot of the features iPod users are used to already.
Said analyst also admitted to AppleInsider that their previous report was TOTAL GARBAGE since it did not take into account THE 100 PLUS APPLE RETAIL STORES THAT SELL IPODS. What frackwits these analysts are. They don't even deserve the dirt on the floormats of their BMWs... Oooh, I'm bitchy today.
Well remembered. The original 9-11% report didn't include Apple stores or Apple.com sales.
Do you even read what people write before replying? Mel said that Zune got 9-11% of the Hard Drive mp3 market -- and this is not just in the first week, at least not according to the arcitcle. You would know this if you had read the article.
The point that Mel makes about Zune is a valid one. The Zune is not competing against the Nano or the Shuffle. I would submit that it isn't even competing against the 80GB iPod. So the most accurate comparison for sales would be to look at the sales numbers for the Zune against 30GB iPod (and any other mp3 players of similar specs). Since we weren't told any of these sort of numbers, we ought to look at the closest numbers that we do have. Thus the 2% numbers are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. If MS entered the market with the range of products that the iPod currently has (three or four flash players and a couple of hard drive players), they would likely show in the 9-11% range for all mp3 players.
We can safely assume that they will add new players to their one Zune in the coming months. If so, then we should see the Zune player as a real contender capable of capturing a lot of the market right away. MS is not just going to sit on this one player. You'll see another player -- probably flash-based -- quickly; and come next Christmas, the Zune line-up will likely be about the same as the iPod's. And will you still be laughing if they are releasing a new product every couple of months all during the next year? -- they will get a lot of press, and consistently over the whole year. This will give them mind-share if nothing else. Right now, no-one really knows what a Zune is (except tech-geeks). What will MS's sales numbers be when the rest of the population finds out that there's a new MS player out there (and with multiple feature sets)? Don't be lulled by the Zune's brown colour: Apple is not!
That doesn't negate the fact that whatever marketshare Zune might take will not be from the iPod, rather from MS's "Plays For Sure" partners, so Apple really doesn't have anything to worry about. By the time MS gets around to catching up to the iPod's current model diversity, Apple will have probably totally revamped the iPod line, especially if the fabled iPod phone comes to market as speculated.
There are so many things Apple could do to instantly kill MS's Zune efforts, the most dramatic of course would be to license FairPlay.
For those who still seem to think that the XBox is some sort of crowning acheivement for MS clearly don't know the history of the device. The first xBox was of course a disaster (at least sales-wise) for MS, and the XBox 360 is only doing marginally better than it's predecessor. Sony's entire Playstation line (PS2 is still selling like hotcakes, PSP isn't doing too badly either) still outsells the XBox line (regular and 360) about 3 to 1. Neither can we forget the comeback kid in this story, Nintendo. The Wii is THE game console of the year, outselling both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 so far, in a shorter amount of time.
I think that the only way for MS to get some traction with the Zune is to somehow tie it with the XBox 360. Otherwise, Zune will go the way of the UMPC , aka Origami.
According to that firm's data, Zune secured 11 percent of the HDD player market in November
Quote:
In the ensuing two-week period ending December 16, Current has Zune inching up to a 12 percent share of the HDD market
... wich is a percent of a percent. You can break everything down to smaller market segments that way. You could also say that the Zune has a 100% marketshare of brown mp3-players.
Besides, who knows that if MS released three players, their total percentage would have to be divided by three and not multiplied ?
In five years, the iPod design hasn't changed very much, because there hasn't been anyone nipping at their heels. I for one am hoping Zune to work out all its bugs and keep playing catch-up with Apple, forcing Apple to speed up their delivery of newer, better, and more exciting products.
OS X... kind of the same thing. Vista has taken five years to get here, and the look of OS X, consequently, hasn't really changed. I remember when a new OS came out every couple of years. I am very surprised to see things slowing down like this.
At the rate we're going, by the time Kurzweil's singularity hits, Apple and Microsoft will stop making new things altogether. This paradox will cause a chain reaction in the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. Or maybe the effect we'll be more localized, limited merely to our own galaxy.
Sorry, it's late.
I disagree. The iPod design has changed much because it hasn't needed to. Once you have a winning formula, you don't change it! OS X had such frequent updates because it had so many features missing, I mean even Steve Jobs said that with the release of Tiger OS X was finally ?complete?. Now that OS X is usable as an everyday OS, with a reasonable amount of useful, and lets face it, novelty features, Apple has had a chance to sit back and concentrate on other projects instead of rushing out the next OS X release.
2007 will be a very interesting year because not only will we see the release of Leopard, with kick-arse features, we?ll see it face Vista. Not forgetting the much anticipated iPod/iPhone release. We?ll see a revolution in iPod design next year, and I think the Apple of 2007 will be a very interesting one.
All I see in that article is that the stopped doing blogs? what does that have to do with MS supposedly "seeding" sites with false pretenders and bots. Or making their own sites with aforementioned false pretenders?
You say to stop using the 2% figure because it is misleading and then you quote the 6% figure for Apple market share which you know full well is also misleading.
It has been noted that Microsoft was seeding comments on influential blogs and forums where the Zune was getting poor coverage. All of a sudden you'd get new users coming in praising the Zune.
And even then it still tanked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woody56292
yeah...
"and the government puts fluoride in our water" ( RvB )
dude are you seriously that much of a conspiracy theorist?
I don't think 'conspiracy theory' has much to do with it, considering that during the DoJ trial MS started a company-funded 'leave Microsoft alone!' campaign that tried very hard to look like a 'grassroots' campaign even though it wasn't. They got caught by some journalists, and the sham 'grassroots' campaign faded away.
Its just how Microsoft does business, sad to say. Though I'm sure they're not the only large corporation who pulls such lame hi-jinx.
OS X... kind of the same thing. Vista has taken five years to get here, and the look of OS X, consequently, hasn't really changed.
Blah. Looks-wise, one could also say that MS OSes haven't really changed that much from Win95 to XP. But XP is considerably better under the hood than 95.... ditto OS X Tiger to OS X 10.0.
In any case, MS must still like what they see, since OS X is what Vista is trying to be. Same as it ever was.
Comments
Re-read it please. And re-read what I said as well.
Well, don't get me wrong - I agree with you on most of your points.
IMHO I think Current is off on their figures. Read the top link first, that way the second won't be such a shock.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=a4mxDq8JK89U
http://www.mp3.com/news/stories/7451.html
These are not Apple fanboys by any stretch!
Regards
I'm also pretty sure that the initial 9% number was either misquoted, or was not explained properly, and everyone jumped on it.
i'm pretty sure as well that they did mean 9% of the HD player market when they released their report.
It wouldn't surprise me, it's hard to keep web sites honest when they are referring to reports that require money to get.
The previous AI article on this subject does mention Sandisk in the mix, who does not make HDD players:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2272
I guess that means that the Zune did have a substantial initial splash on the HDD player market. Add a flash device and a few refinements and they may have a sustainable product line.
Well, don't get me wrong - I agree with you on most of your points.
IMHO I think Current is off on their figures. Read the top link first, that way the second won't be such a shock.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=a4mxDq8JK89U
http://www.mp3.com/news/stories/7451.html
These are not Apple fanboys by any stretch!
You are both right, the problem is that you aren't talking about what Melgross was talking about. Your links appear to use figures that combine flash and hard drive players as one market. Melgross was referring specifically to the hard drive player subset of the market.
Because it's brown!!!11! Like poo!!11....
Yay, I thought we were going to go an entire thread without a poo joke.
In speaking to AppleInsider, NPD analyst Steve Baker said the most recent share data was compiled from a more comprehensive list of retail sources that factored in iPod sales at Apple's own stores, and is therefore more representative of the Microsoft player's overall market share.
Said analyst also admitted to AppleInsider that their previous report was TOTAL GARBAGE since it did not take into account THE 100 PLUS APPLE RETAIL STORES THAT SELL IPODS.
No, no, no...... Zune got 9+% the first WEEK it was on the market. It quickly, and appears quietly, slipped to 1.9 - 2.0% the next week. - and has been going south since.
Do you even read what people write before replying? Mel said that Zune got 9-11% of the Hard Drive mp3 market -- and this is not just in the first week, at least not according to the arcitcle. You would know this if you had read the article.
The point that Mel makes about Zune is a valid one. The Zune is not competing against the Nano or the Shuffle. I would submit that it isn't even competing against the 80GB iPod. So the most accurate comparison for sales would be to look at the sales numbers for the Zune against 30GB iPod (and any other mp3 players of similar specs). Since we weren't told any of these sort of numbers, we ought to look at the closest numbers that we do have. Thus the 2% numbers are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. If MS entered the market with the range of products that the iPod currently has (three or four flash players and a couple of hard drive players), they would likely show in the 9-11% range for all mp3 players.
We can safely assume that they will add new players to their one Zune in the coming months. If so, then we should see the Zune player as a real contender capable of capturing a lot of the market right away. MS is not just going to sit on this one player. You'll see another player -- probably flash-based -- quickly; and come next Christmas, the Zune line-up will likely be about the same as the iPod's. And will you still be laughing if they are releasing a new product every couple of months all during the next year? -- they will get a lot of press, and consistently over the whole year. This will give them mind-share if nothing else. Right now, no-one really knows what a Zune is (except tech-geeks). What will MS's sales numbers be when the rest of the population finds out that there's a new MS player out there (and with multiple feature sets)? Don't be lulled by the Zune's brown colour: Apple is not!
The point that Mel makes about Zune is a valid one. The Zune is not competing against the Nano or the Shuffle. I would submit that it isn't even competing against the 80GB iPod. So the most accurate comparison for sales would be to look at the sales numbers for the Zune against 30GB iPod (and any other mp3 players of similar specs). Since we weren't told any of these sort of numbers, we ought to look at the closest numbers that we do have. Thus the 2% numbers are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. If MS entered the market with the range of products that the iPod currently has (three or four flash players and a couple of hard drive players), they would likely show in the 9-11% range for all mp3 players.
Does anyone know the November sales figures of the 30Gig iPod?!
Yeah. But that's Microsoft-think in a nutshell... 'feature-itis'.
They honestly think cramming in features like WiFi will be the magic bullet that slays the iPod. Which really shows that they don't even 'get' the iPod in the first place.
With that lack of understanding, they'll never beat the iPod. Gotta love Microsoft-think.
.
Not really. The iPod has many more features than the Zune. Zune lacks games, calendar, contacts, a clock, alarms, an equalizer and you can't even use it as an external drive. So it has a couple of features the iPod doesn't but lacks a lot of the features iPod users are used to already.
yeah...
"and the government puts fluoride in our water" ( RvB )
dude are you seriously that much of a conspiracy theorist?
Actually, it was Microsoft's advertising company, Edelman, that admitted they were seeding the blogs for marketing. No conspiracy theory.
When it backfired, they quickly went back to traditional media advertising.
http://valleywag.com/tech/microsoft/...ere-219826.php
Said analyst also admitted to AppleInsider that their previous report was TOTAL GARBAGE since it did not take into account THE 100 PLUS APPLE RETAIL STORES THAT SELL IPODS.
Well remembered. The original 9-11% report didn't include Apple stores or Apple.com sales.
Do you even read what people write before replying? Mel said that Zune got 9-11% of the Hard Drive mp3 market -- and this is not just in the first week, at least not according to the arcitcle. You would know this if you had read the article.
The point that Mel makes about Zune is a valid one. The Zune is not competing against the Nano or the Shuffle. I would submit that it isn't even competing against the 80GB iPod. So the most accurate comparison for sales would be to look at the sales numbers for the Zune against 30GB iPod (and any other mp3 players of similar specs). Since we weren't told any of these sort of numbers, we ought to look at the closest numbers that we do have. Thus the 2% numbers are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. If MS entered the market with the range of products that the iPod currently has (three or four flash players and a couple of hard drive players), they would likely show in the 9-11% range for all mp3 players.
We can safely assume that they will add new players to their one Zune in the coming months. If so, then we should see the Zune player as a real contender capable of capturing a lot of the market right away. MS is not just going to sit on this one player. You'll see another player -- probably flash-based -- quickly; and come next Christmas, the Zune line-up will likely be about the same as the iPod's. And will you still be laughing if they are releasing a new product every couple of months all during the next year? -- they will get a lot of press, and consistently over the whole year. This will give them mind-share if nothing else. Right now, no-one really knows what a Zune is (except tech-geeks). What will MS's sales numbers be when the rest of the population finds out that there's a new MS player out there (and with multiple feature sets)? Don't be lulled by the Zune's brown colour: Apple is not!
That doesn't negate the fact that whatever marketshare Zune might take will not be from the iPod, rather from MS's "Plays For Sure" partners, so Apple really doesn't have anything to worry about. By the time MS gets around to catching up to the iPod's current model diversity, Apple will have probably totally revamped the iPod line, especially if the fabled iPod phone comes to market as speculated.
There are so many things Apple could do to instantly kill MS's Zune efforts, the most dramatic of course would be to license FairPlay.
For those who still seem to think that the XBox is some sort of crowning acheivement for MS clearly don't know the history of the device. The first xBox was of course a disaster (at least sales-wise) for MS, and the XBox 360 is only doing marginally better than it's predecessor. Sony's entire Playstation line (PS2 is still selling like hotcakes, PSP isn't doing too badly either) still outsells the XBox line (regular and 360) about 3 to 1. Neither can we forget the comeback kid in this story, Nintendo. The Wii is THE game console of the year, outselling both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 so far, in a shorter amount of time.
I think that the only way for MS to get some traction with the Zune is to somehow tie it with the XBox 360. Otherwise, Zune will go the way of the UMPC , aka Origami.
Well remembered...
Thank you sir... 8)
According to that firm's data, Zune secured 11 percent of the HDD player market in November
Quote:
In the ensuing two-week period ending December 16, Current has Zune inching up to a 12 percent share of the HDD market
... wich is a percent of a percent. You can break everything down to smaller market segments that way. You could also say that the Zune has a 100% marketshare of brown mp3-players.
Besides, who knows that if MS released three players, their total percentage would have to be divided by three and not multiplied ?
In five years, the iPod design hasn't changed very much, because there hasn't been anyone nipping at their heels. I for one am hoping Zune to work out all its bugs and keep playing catch-up with Apple, forcing Apple to speed up their delivery of newer, better, and more exciting products.
OS X... kind of the same thing. Vista has taken five years to get here, and the look of OS X, consequently, hasn't really changed. I remember when a new OS came out every couple of years. I am very surprised to see things slowing down like this.
At the rate we're going, by the time Kurzweil's singularity hits, Apple and Microsoft will stop making new things altogether. This paradox will cause a chain reaction in the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. Or maybe the effect we'll be more localized, limited merely to our own galaxy.
Sorry, it's late.
I disagree. The iPod design has changed much because it hasn't needed to. Once you have a winning formula, you don't change it! OS X had such frequent updates because it had so many features missing, I mean even Steve Jobs said that with the release of Tiger OS X was finally ?complete?. Now that OS X is usable as an everyday OS, with a reasonable amount of useful, and lets face it, novelty features, Apple has had a chance to sit back and concentrate on other projects instead of rushing out the next OS X release.
2007 will be a very interesting year because not only will we see the release of Leopard, with kick-arse features, we?ll see it face Vista. Not forgetting the much anticipated iPod/iPhone release. We?ll see a revolution in iPod design next year, and I think the Apple of 2007 will be a very interesting one.
Actually, it was Microsoft's advertising company, Edelman, that admitted they were seeding the blogs for marketing. No conspiracy theory.
When it backfired, they quickly went back to traditional media advertising.
http://valleywag.com/tech/microsoft/...ere-219826.php
All I see in that article is that the stopped doing blogs? what does that have to do with MS supposedly "seeding" sites with false pretenders and bots. Or making their own sites with aforementioned false pretenders?
am I missing something?
It has been noted that Microsoft was seeding comments on influential blogs and forums where the Zune was getting poor coverage. All of a sudden you'd get new users coming in praising the Zune.
And even then it still tanked.
yeah...
"and the government puts fluoride in our water" ( RvB )
dude are you seriously that much of a conspiracy theorist?
I don't think 'conspiracy theory' has much to do with it, considering that during the DoJ trial MS started a company-funded 'leave Microsoft alone!' campaign that tried very hard to look like a 'grassroots' campaign even though it wasn't. They got caught by some journalists, and the sham 'grassroots' campaign faded away.
Its just how Microsoft does business, sad to say. Though I'm sure they're not the only large corporation who pulls such lame hi-jinx.
.
In five years, the iPod design hasn't changed very much, because there hasn't been anyone nipping at their heels.
Nope. The earlier iPods were TANKS, and they didn't have all the controls integrated into the click wheel. Remember these?:
http://lowendipod.com/art/1g_ipod.jpg
http://www.ipodities.com/images/3Gsleeve.gif
OS X... kind of the same thing. Vista has taken five years to get here, and the look of OS X, consequently, hasn't really changed.
Blah. Looks-wise, one could also say that MS OSes haven't really changed that much from Win95 to XP. But XP is considerably better under the hood than 95.... ditto OS X Tiger to OS X 10.0.
In any case, MS must still like what they see, since OS X is what Vista is trying to be. Same as it ever was.
.