If you weigh the anecdotal evidence, Microsoft's Zune didn't have a very merry Christmas. Failing to make Amazon's top sellers list at any point during the holiday season, the Zune trailed far behind Apple's iPod, several models of which held top spots at various points. According to TechWeb "During the holiday season, Zune was seldom seen among the top 10 consumer electronics on Amazon. Microsoft, however, says sales have met its internal forecasts, and it expects sales to pick up over time as the company increases marketing and introduces technology enhancements."
Meanwhile the iPod was holding steady at nearly 73% of DAP retail revenue and a solid 63% of unit sales during the same period. As much as Microsoft would like to pretend that the Zune is everything they'd hoped it would be, you have to imagine that somewhere in Redmond a few execs are sitting around a white-board re-evaluating the Zune strategy.
1. Microsoft doesn't care. They'll give all the record companies $5 a player, give the player away and wait for Apple to be driven out of the business and then shovel crap into the market space.
They think.
In fact, even if the Zune were free, consumers would find its user scheme - everything is hard to use, locked down and can disappear or stop working anytime - deeply disturbing, like an operating system that can blow up at any time for any reason and no reason. Whoops! I guess I described Windows.
Ted
Posted at 6:51PM on Dec 27th 2006 by Ted Nugent