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Zune A Success, Amazingly!

Wow, here’s some great news for Microsoft: In its first week of sales, the Zune player represented somewhere between 9 and 13% of all portable media players, beating out regular #2 Sandisk. While that is way behind the iPod, if Zune becomes the #2 player brand, it can be considered a success, creating a viable future competitor to the iPod. If Microsoft can claim solid #2 status, then Zune isn’t going away, and consumers will be willing to give it a look. Nice!

November 30th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Zune, Windows Media, General | 6 comments



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6 Comments »

  1. “if Zune becomes the #2 player brand, it can be considered a success, creating a viable future competitor to the iPod.”

    Why? Was Sandisk considered to be a viable competitor to the iPod before the Zune was there?

    Comment by paul haine | November 30, 2006

  2. I think the fact that I’ve never heard of Sandisk says the most here. No-one ever gave them a look just because they were number 2.

    Comment by Emma | November 30, 2006

  3. You never heard of Sandisk? Wow!

    Oh, and Paul: Sandisk was never a viable competitor, because they had neither the ambition nor the resources nor the market position to take on Apple and increase their market share. Microsoft does. All they needed was about 10% of the market to begin the process of chipping away at Apple, and they may very well pull that off.

    Comment by Nathan Weinberg | December 1, 2006

  4. I was very much underwhelmed. I mean, for such a product, one would expect it to be in the top spot for a while after its introduction. It’s not, and I suspect that Microsoft might drop lower after a while, though it should be clear noone knows what the long term is going to bring us.

    I am still all for Cowon’s earlier DRM-free products - http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/

    Comment by Tim | December 2, 2006

  5. I’m just curious about the whole Zune experience. Having seen the reviews (Andy Iknato(?)) I’d be loathe to buy one…

    Comment by Neil Winton | December 2, 2006

  6. I trust that Microsoft’s abandoning of its PlaysForSure clients will come back to haunt it as firms finally learn above all other things to distrust the monopolist.

    Comment by john beck | February 20, 2007

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