Opening Zune Sales Flaccid

An anonymous reader writes "As 'Black Friday' approaches and consumers line up for the Playstation 3 it looks like Zune has become an afterthought. Despite months of hype, opening Zune sales are only so-so. While Zune did reach the top 10 on Amazon's Top 25 list for electronic product sales on its first day, it quickly fell below the top 15 and continues to drop. Six separate iPod models now outsell it as well as SanDisk's e250 player. In-store sales are not much better."

A product no one wanted

[ConfusedSelfHating]

It was almost as if Microsoft said "Let's throw millions of dollars at a market and see if we can get a piece of it." The fact that it was trying to enter a market that is already flooded with similar products doesn't help. The fact that the Zune is incompatible with Microsoft's music files doesn't help.

This is not to say that Microsoft should stay out of consumer electronics. The Xbox 360 has a good chance of being the dominant console this generation (outside of Japan). The Zune just happens to be a waste of time and money.

Re:Zune's Problem IS......Balmer

[DAldredge]

Then why is the iTunes store so popular?

Re:Welcome to the social?

[Technician]

Hello from Seattle. Hello? Anybody here?

Seattle is fine with lots of people, traffic jam problems, beautiful countryside, the sound, etc. A short ways East in Redmond might be a diffrent story.

More seriously, Yet another incompatible lower feature format.. Get a clue. Trading very restrictive DRM in another incompatible format for a taste of Wi-Fi is not a selling point.

The only selling point for middle school kids is there is no DRM on photos. They can be transfered wirelessly. This is the hot new way to share porn.

Parents and teachers are not ammused.

Re:First pun!

[davidmcg]

To say that poor sales are not disappointing is just trying to spin a bad situation. You should get a job working for Tony Blair :) Simply put, a poor launch can do bad things for the Zune name. Look how Netscape's reputation was permanently damaged after the release of Netscape 6.0. The people who were holding out from IE finally made the switch and never looked back until Firefox. Microsoft needs to fix its mistakes quickly and get this thing selling and getting positive reviews that don't sound like they're paid for by MS. A lot of the positive reviews look like paid postings and seem to follow a similar format: - assuming anyone who does not like the zune is a mac zealot - how brown looks really good when you see it for yourself - how cool it is to send music to your friends - how the video screen makes things look better (that I do agree with - although a higher resolution would be better) - It *will* be even better with firmware updates (I'd rather compare it to what's there now rather than what may or may not happen in the future)

Re:iTunes Music Store only looks like a lock in.

[iroll]

If you represented any significant percentage of the market, Apple might care about you. Of course they don't!

Joe Six-Pack doesn't see iTunes' DRM getting in his way. In fact, the only time he notices it is when he types in his password (once in a blue moon), to get another computer authorized on his iTunes account. He doesn't notice the compression artifacts; he doesn't even know what "lossy" means.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Zune's Problem IS......Balmer

[DAldredge]

I tunes has sold over 1 billion songs. I would call that popular.

Re:Just another crappy MP3 player

[astrosmash]

Of the 14 million people who bought iPods this quarter (150,000 per day), the vast majority of them couldn't care to purchase the FM radio option, don't care about file formats (as long as it plays their existing MP3s), and don't use their iPod as a generic mass storage device.

Although I rarely use it, I agree that the mass storage feature is nice to have when you need it; I can't image how an MP3 player could ship without it.

Some techies seem to waste a lot of time fretting over issues such as file formats, DRM, and technical specs. Meanwhile, everyone else is too busy enjoying their music to give a rats ass.

Re:Zune's Problem IS......Balmer

[CastrTroy]

Britney Spears' first album [wikipedia.org] sold 15 million copies in the US. With 11 tracks on the disc, that's 165,000,000 Tracks sold by a single artist on a single disc. Granted she's a very popular artist but if a single artist can make even 1/10 of the sales of iTunes on a single disc, then I wouldn't say that iTunes comes anywhere close to approaching popularity. It's just a drop in the bucket as far as music sales are concerned.

Re:Welcome to the social?

[yo_tuco]

"Soon they will be changing it to 'Goodbye from Seattle'"

If you are Matt Jubelirer, product manager for the Zune project, you are probably Sleepless in Seattle right about now.

Re:here's the thing...

[MK_CSGuy]

Ditto.
Take FM recording for example - with Zune you can listen to the radio but not record.
My 64$ player can do that (and in WMA too :P ).

Origami?

[theurge14]

I remember hearing about the Origami project last year, what ever became of it?

Let's be sensible

[tkrotchko]

I don't get why anybody would buy this when iPods are cheaper for the same capacity.

There's already a considerable ecosystem of accessories and attachments for the iPod.

It works with two open formats... mp3 and aac.

iTunes works with Mac, Windows 2K, XP, and Vista.

Does anybody want to buy this because they can send a song to a friend and he/she can listen to it 3 times. That's it? That's the feature I've gotta have? It doesn't even "Play for Sure!".

Re:First pun!

[MacJedi]

True, but that was Taco's first impression. I'd be willing to give h4rm0ny more credit. ;)

Re:this product... not so much

[avajcovec]

I agree. The other thing I don't understand is that all of the commercials show the Zune with a "Connecting..." screen. I've seen it about 5 times now and all it makes me think is that this thing takes forever to connect! Not how I want to spend my time. You would think they'd at least have one shot of "Transferring Song..." or somesuch.

Re:Hurrah! Apple's near-monopoly is secure!

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I must have missed all the articles where Steve Jobs attempted to subvert the creation and marketing of Zune and other competing iPod products in order to maintain the near-monopoly and crush the competition. As far as I know, iPod is successful based off it's own merits, and the dancing silhouettes.

Re:Coming in at #83

[MojoStan]

Doesn't anyone bother to fact-check before modding a troll "Insightful?" The brown Zune, which trolls are ridiculing without seeing it in person, was at #83 (now #78 (1:15pm PST) [amazon.com]). The black Zune is at #24 [amazon.com].

Yes, Zune sales appear "flaccid," but you don't need to resort to Michael Moore tactics to make your point.

Re:Welcome to the social?

[ksheff]

true. I think I'd get a Neuros DAC instead. At least it can record WAV files from line input and has 80G of storage for the same price.