Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes the Xbox game console, the Zune music player, software that runs on mobile devices and new television projects was interviewed by Dan Fost and Ryan Kim for The San Francisco Chronicle.
“While the division has yet to turn a profit, Bach said in an interview that profitability is just around the corner, and Microsoft is relishing its competition with companies like Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Research In Motion,” Fost and Kim report.
Some excepts from Bach:
We’re still about nine months into having Zune in the marketplace. We’re very pleased with the progress. We’ve sold a little over a million Zunes. In the category we’re in, the hard-disk-based category, we’ve got about 10 percent market share. It’s a good start. It’s not an overwhelming start. I’m not going to pretend it’s some gigantic move.
As we look to the future, you’re certainly going to see us continue to invest in that category. We don’t enter things like that lightly.
There will be new things down the path (in the fall). We just came out with a special edition pink Zune and a watermelon-colored Zune, which are the personal favorites with my kids.
People are sharing. When your installed base is a million, the benefits of sharing, frankly, aren’t as wide as we hope to see in the future. One of the challenges for us is continuing to build on the install base.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “THe_Wzrd” and “JB” for the heads up.]
First of all, to have taken nine 6.5 months (Zune debuted on Nov. 14, 2006) in today’s portable media player market (fully-prepped by Apple) to sell a paltry one million units is laughable. It’s even worse when you consider the very real possibility that Microsoft is counting every single one of the Zunes they’ve stuffed into the channel (shipped to retailers is quite different than sold to customers).
The Zune is sold only in the United States. The U.S. has a population of roughly 300 million. Go ahead, stand on a street corner anywhere in America — except the one directly outside of Microsoft’s front gate (and even there the situation might be similar) — and see if 1 out of every 300 passersby has a Microsoft Zune. You won’t find 1 out of 1000, no matter how long you stand out there. Welcome to the antisocial.
So, how many of those one million Zunes have actually been sold to end customers and how many are sitting inside retailers’ dusty displays or piled in stock rooms? That’s the real story here – a story that executives who head Microsoft divisions that have never turned a dime in profit won’t be touting in interviews.
For reference, last Christmas quarter, Apple sold an average of one million iPods every 4.27 days.
MacDailyNews Note: Philip Elmer-DeWitt points out on the Business 2.0 Apple blog that “Bach didn’t actually say that Microsoft had already sold a million Zunes. If you listen to the interview, which the Chronicle helpfully provides in a podcast, what Bach said was, ‘When we finish our fiscal year in June we’ll have sold a little over a million Zunes, so we feel very good about that.’ …Microsoft still has more than a month to sell its first million Zunes, which would put it on the schedule it set for itself, not ahead.” Full article here.
ONE MILLION SUCKERS AND COUNTING…
This explains why Circuit City had Zune for $200 advertised in their Sunday newspaper insert. MS has jammed the channel.
MDN are the only ones to report this properly. Every astroturf/fanboy Zune site reported it as a million SOLD, rather than just a state-of-the-channel-stuffing report. Even the Slashdot submission was wrong.
Magic Word: “forces”, as in look at the forces aligned against the Zune, preventing it from ever actually mattering.
“In the category we’re in, the hard-disk-based category, we’ve got about 10 percent market share.”
I too would be very interested to see the math on this. What category exactly are they comparing themselves too?
The article stated” You can take an iPod and plug it into your Xbox 360 and play your music. There’s a (copy-protection) issue on music you bought on the iTunes service, but that’s not our issue, that’s something Apple put in place, saying “We don’t want to give you the ability to play these songs.” OK, that’s their choice.”
MORE FUD from the same people that just have to sell you DRM. You MUST have Microsoft DRM, YOU NEED MS DRM.
But its Apple that is keeping you from playing your songs.
When they cannot speak the truth, you know its all BS. LOL
Apple rocks. PS. if Apple is selling only 1/100 of its units as 30 gig video iPods, that would still make them selling much faster than ZUNES.
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Ok guys, go do some research. Go to your nearest Zune retailer and ask the guy nehind the counter how many they have sold. Lets have some anecdotal research of our own here. I only met one person who had a Zune, and he works for Microsoft. But then I live in Sydney and its not sold here as far as I know…
mw=result. As in lets do the research and publish our results.
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Brown? Pink? What is WRONG with Microsoft? Is it amateur hour in Redmond every day?
“I too would be very interested to see the math on this. What category exactly are they comparing themselves too?”
30GB hard drive music players.
The fact is–market share means nothing when you can define your own market.
During additional product sales analysis, it was determined that Zune had amassed greater than 90% market share in the shit brown category.
Upward and onward, Microsoft! Great job. I knew you could do it.
This officially marks the beginning of the end for the iPod.
He who laughs last…
Your potential. Our passion.™
Actually, if accurate, it is pretty good sales considering the impact of the iPod on the market.
Heck, if Apple had 10% of the computer market we would all be super happy.
10% market share in 6+ months is not too shabby.
Give Microsoft their due – MDN was predicting a total bust.
Microsoft is in for the long haul, they have so much cash to waste they do not need to worry about being profitable in this market.
Good to see the Zune amnesty bin in action. Great pic…
Does the watermelon Zune come with seed you have to squirt out?
“Golly” You own an iBook and you were hoping to buy a Zune????
“Heck, if Apple had 10% of the computer market we would all be super happy.”
I wouldn’t be super happy if Apple had 10% of the computer market while losing money. I always thought that companies were in business to make money, not lose it.
I bet Apple sells one million iPhones by the end of June!!
The G2 Zune will have a 25GB hard drive. Microsoft expects 100% market share from the day it is launched.
That’s like saying Apple has 100% market share in Computers. You must just compare those computers in the category that can run Windows, Linux and Mac OS X simultaneously. Any other category is unfair.
The Zune has less than 0.5% of the MP3 player market. Stop the 30 GB hard drive category bullshit.
By Zues! a Zune in June? in tune? No itune? Bah! humbug.
Competition is good for us Apple consumers.
We don´t have to buy the other competitors products, but them pushing into Apple market space makes Apple bring out even better products.
One million of those turkeys? That Microwhore Thurrott is probably crowing about the supposed “million” already on his blog.
No way. They stuffed the channel again, as with the Xbox.
As Lincoln said:
“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
“Competition is good for us Apple consumers”
Microsoft isn’t providing it. Archos and Zen and iRiver and Sandisk perhaps. Not MS. They’re only providing competition in the “what do you want to flush down the john” stakes.
Zunes are poop, but the comment about not underestimating Microsoft is something I totally agree with. A ginormous government-sanctioned monopoly with limitless cash setting its sights on your most profitable market is bad news for Apple, long term. When MS starts dumping $99 30GB Zunes onto the market they might start actually selling them to customers. Why wouldn’t they dump them? They’re losing money anyway and nobody will stop them. They seem to be above the law.
It’s funny that Microsoft claims to have 10% of the hard drive -based media player market, just as Apple is starting it’s transition away from using hard drives. Within two years, iPods (including iPhones) will probably ALL be flash-based.
Actually, the start of the transition may have been the iPod nano, when Apple canceled the most polular player on the market at that time (the micro-drive based iPod mini) and replaced it with a flash-based player.
Hard drives are fragile and consume too much power, plus there is a small lag time when you start playing something new. Having flash memory in the “big” iPods will be yet another way Apple distinguishes itself from the competition.
June of what fiscal year? 2013??!!
Paul Thurrott thought enough of Microsoft selling one million Zunes to post about it on the holiday. Today he had to retract it, yet not only did he imply that it was really no big deal, but also that the Zune has done better than the iPod initially.
I took exception this this:
http://thesmallwave.blogspot.com/2007/05/zunes-paul-thurrott-and-thud.html