Heavily Discounted Zune Outpacing iPod Sales

firegate writes "Yahoo Tech is reporting that the Microsoft Zune, having been heavily discounted for the holiday season, 'is currently Amazon's top-selling music player, beating out the new iPod Nano and the 80GB iPod on the 'Bestsellers in Electronics' list.' An Associated Press report even indicates that the Zune's newfound popularity has left it in short supply, sold out in many locations. Is this a sign that a true competitor, from Microsoft no less, has finally broken into the Apple-dominated MP3 player market? And will this spell more success for Windows-media based music subscription services like Napster?"

story is bull

[friesandgravy]

story is complete bull. go check amazon, as of today, 1:30 EST, apple mp3 players are at places 1,2,4,5,6,7,8. the zune is number 9. (apple continues at places 11, 12, 13, 18 ...) http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172630/ref=pd_ts_e_nav [amazon.com]

Minute to minute...

[BWJones]

I suppose it depends on when you look at the numbers as Amazon gives discrete periods of time when items are selling vs. others. For instance, looking at it now, the Zune is #8, well behind 7 flavors of iPods...

Suddenly, a blog is old media

[GarfBond]

Why listen to a blog pontificating on something they know nothing about when you can go straight to the source? http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172630/ref=pd_ts_e_nav [amazon.com].

As of MY press time, Zune 80 is #9. iPods occupy spots 1,2, and 4-8. #3 is a Sansa of some variety, #9 is a Zune, and #10 is another Sansa. 11-14 are different nano varieties, and all the way at #15 is a Zune spot.

Feel free to come up with your own crackpot theory as to why this is. My favorite is the Zune isn't popular unless it's dirt cheap.

Things change

[Jonboy X]

At the moment, Apple has 7 od the top 8 spots on Amazon's MP3 bestseller list [amazon.com], including their 4 gig Nano at #1. The 2nd-gen 80-gig Zune comes in an #9. However, you'll note that the Yahoo article's a week and half old.

Re:mp3 to go

[antibryce]

iTunes/iPods have done this for a long long time. You can even subscribe to video podcasts if you have an ipod capable of playing it.

Using "Rate of Growth" is a misleading statistic

[popo]

"Rate of Growth" is one of the most commonly "spun" statistics.

For example: If I sell 1 widget last month, and then I sell 10 widgets this month I can make the claim that I have a 1000% month-over-month growth rate. Not only that, I have a "faster rate of growth" than every other major widget manufacturer/retailer.

Obviously, rate of growth is clearly only a meaningful statistic when presented alongside comparative volumes.

Re:story is bull

[Tmack]

Article reads like a piece of Micro$oft marketing after actually looking at Amazon's numbers. Looks like they are willing to try anything, even outright lying, to get their shiny turd to sell. Sure, Amazon might have shown the Zune at no1, but was that during a stats update before the iPod sales were tallied? Looks like M$ once again trying to create hype: "Oh look! Its selling at No1 and stores are selling out! Better go get one now before you wont be able to get your nephew's xmass gift!!".

The supporting links to it being in short supply in TFA are even broken, leading me to think that stores ordered maybe 2 or 3 knowing how poorly they sell, and once those were gone, have just been ordering per request.

Tm

Re:Minute to minute...

[drcagn]

Those lists are wrong. Neither list even contains the current generations of iPods.

The hard drive list has hardware discontinued years ago as #17.

Re:No

[MyDixieWrecked]

...Microsoft's online music store isn't as comprehensive as iTunes.

Not only that, but putting the music on the zune isn't as easy a task as setting up iTunes. I have a first-gen zune (brown, no less) and it took me over an hour to get the software installed and get ready to use the zune. Also, I got the zune second-hand and once I set up my software, I wasn't able to play any of the music that was left on it. It kept saying that I didn't have permission. When I asked the guy who I got it from about that, he said that they were mp3'd using the zune's software, so he didn't know why that was the case... they shouldn't have been DRM'd.

I don't know if the new zunes fixed that or if the new zunes have a better interface on the device itself (I do know they haven't really gotten the desktop application any simpler. it's still a pain to use). The old zune is a pain in the arse to navigate and the only thing I really feel it has going for it is the larger screen, although I haven't put any video on it, yet.

so, has anyone used one of the new zunes, yet? has MS improved the interface? The physical box definitely is much nicer looking than the original model and, from a purely superficial standpoint looks like it can compete with the ipods... at least with the general consumer population.

Re:story is bull

[ThreeGigs]

Amazon's numbers aren't right.

Overall MP3 list shows 80GB iPod at #4. This is a hard drive based player, no? It's the highest ranked HD based player on the 'complete' list.

Yet, if you narrow it down to show only HD based players, suddenly the Zune is beating it.

*Amazon* seems a bit confused, no wonder the press is too.

Re:No

[Graymalkin]

Your friends must be illiterate as iTunes asks if you want to resync your library with the one of the new computer. You can tell it not to and it will be in manual song management mode. From there you can drop all of the songs you want onto the iPod. It's not rocket surgery.

Re:No

[pokerdad]

Except they can't legally do that, unless they plan on always selling zunes at a loss, they would be in violation of antitrust legislation if they used an artificially low price to cut into the competition before raising the price again.

IANAL, but I am pretty sure that US antitrust law forbids monopolies from selling at a loss to gain market share/hurt competitors; MS is certainly not a monopoly in the music player business.

Re:story is bull

[jellomizer]

The Zune was the Number 1 player between 3:00 EST - 4:00 EST where the total MP3 Players sold during that time was 4 and 2 of them were Zunes. Also looking at their normal spot it is actually kinda bad considering most of the other spots are by DIFFERENT COLORS OF iPODS! I would care more of an aggregate iPods vs. Zunes and you will see the real numbers.

Re:The Zune-for-Christmas Death Plot

[jawtheshark]

Are there still people that don't know about QTFairUse [hymn-project.org]? All informed people by now buy only "Plus" songs or stick to CDs. I've got a co-worker that got heavily burned by DRM, and I explained him what to do in order to avoid lock in. The Zune plays AAC, by the way. Just not protected AAC.

Re:No

[jordyhoyt]

Try refining your results a bit, perhaps looking at "MP3 Players" [amazon.com] (which iPods do indeed dominate), but then selecting the subsection "Hard-Drive Based" [amazon.com]. Here, Zune takes spots 1,2, and 4 (Brown, Black and White, respectively), iPod gets space 3, and the Zen is 5th.

Obviously this is some sort of evil plot by Microsoft.

Also you might try looking lower in the "Portable Digital Media Player" bestseller list: iPods are there, just very low on the list.

Excellent research!

[Simon Brooke]

You'll get banned from Slashdot for doing things like that, you know. This site is for prejudice and uninformed drivel only; Uncovering the real scam is bad form.

It amused me particularly because I asked someone only today why JVC sell over 200 different current models of camcorders in the UK, and was told that it was because of the scam shops do which says 'if you can find one of these cheaper anywhere else we'll refund the difference...' - apparently each major reseller gets one model which only they sell, even though it's practically identical to all the other models which are exclusive to each of the other major retailers. This scam of Microsoft's seems to me to be a sort of variant of the same gag.

Caveat emptor.

Re:Minute to minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

399
389.99

That's 1 cent, jackass

Re:No

[Karlt1]

"Also you might try looking lower in the "Portable Digital Media Player" bestseller list: iPods are there, just very low on the list."

This was debunked months ago...There are no current generation iPods on the list. For some reason Amazon is not counting current generation iPods as a portable media player.