“Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer Thursday said the company aims to grow its Zune digital music service and devices, hoping to take market share from Apple Inc’s iPod,” Hans Schoemaker reports for Dow Jones.
“‘We’re going to push our music service and move forward with the devices,’ Ballmer said at an event in Zurich,” Schoemaker reports. “‘We’re going up against a company that does very good work – I gotta give Apple its due,’ he said. ‘But we went into that market and got a market share of some 10%,'”
“Microsoft said it sold over 1.2 million Zunes since last year, compared with sales of 41.4 million iPods from Oct. 2006 to June 2007, according to Apple figures,” Schoemaker reports.
Full article here.
Ballmer must be using Excel to calculate Zune’s market share. Or he’s lying, stupid, or both. 1.2M is 2.9% of 41.4M. 2.9%. And that’s assigning Apple’s share 100% of the market. Give Apple the 70% of the market it actually owns and the entire market (comprised of SanDisk, Sony, Creative, Samsung, and all of the other iPod also rans, er… killers) totals around 59M. 1.2M is 2.03%. That’s Microsoft’s market share.
Ballmer, of course, is repeating his “lie of omission.” He’s talking about hard drive-based portable media player market share – without mentioning that distinction, of course. The only problem with that – besides not implicitly stating that you’re talking about a subset of the market – is that it’s a fictitious, made-up, fantasy number since Apple, the dominant market force, does not break out hard drive sales from flash-based iPods for competitive reasons. In other words, nobody besides Apple CEO Steve Jobs really knows the number of hard drive-based players sold, so Microsoft is just using “10%” as a guesstimate; probably one that conveniently misses on the extreme high-side, of course. Unless you think that only 12M hard-drive based portable media players were sold in total since October 2, 2007, when the Zune began its quest to gather dust on Costco shelves. (Zune has 10% of the narrowly-defined “U.S. 30GB hard drive-based player market,” perhaps?)
Does having 2% market share of the iPod market give Microsoft license to lie about and inflate their market share? Does having 2% market share somehow turn what are supposed to be journalists into complacent repeaters of a lie that’s easily disproved using basic math?
Even MDN is wrong:
Apple’s 41 million iPods are WORLDWIDE sales. So US-numbers should be considerably smaller.
Nevertheless Ballmer’s last brain cell must’ve taken a week off.
I asked a Best Buy employee if anyone was buying Zunes a few months ago and he told me it was the 2nd most popular 30-gig hard-drive based device.
No, a lie is a lie. And there goal is 10%, not there market share.
They have a long way to go before they reach that, if they can even. The latest of the Zune isn’t much better than the previous one and therefore I don’t think much will change.
Hey MDN, we have 100% of the pink, brown, and watermelon colored, hard-drive based, DAP market! Watch out Apple!
Competition is healthy and good for the market.
Apple without competitor challenges is almost as bad as MS without competition.
Bring it on.
John, learn the difference between “their” and “there” — chances are that it will make a big difference in your credibility here and in your paycheck in the real world.
Tom,
Meaningless and likely intended to obfuscate. iPod could sell 98 players to every two Zunes and Zune could still be described “the 2nd most popular 30-gig hard-drive based device.”
Please excuse me for the vast disparity between my IQ and the others’ on display above. God obviously has no problem with gift inequity.
The Grammar Nazis have struck! Hide the kids!
Seriously, the point made about competition is valid. Microsoft’s attempts just help show the superiority of the Apple solution.
Ballmer requested banana scented yellow Zunes for the revamped designs. Preloaded with old Tarzan flicks.
MMMMMMonkey boy!
Ballmer has gotten his Hollywood analogies mixed up and went with the wrong one…..
“If you suck (at) it, they will come.”
-Feels Of Dreams, starring Rod Scarew
Grammer Anyone,
Welcome to the WWW. Grammer is not that important. Posters don’t have editors, so get over it.
Mac Genius,
Let me dumb down Tom’s post so a moron like you can understand:
ha, ha, I asked a Best Buy employee if anyone was buying Zunes a few months ago and he told me it was the 2nd most popular 30-gig hard-drive based device, ha, ha.
In other words, nobody besides Apple CEO Steve Jobs really knows the number of hard drive-based players sold
Oh, come on. I’m sure Apple COO Tim Cook and a number of Apple executives and accounting types also know that number.
Better would have been “nobody besides Apple really knows”.
Hyperbole does no one any favors.
“Grammer is not that important.”
Apparently, neither is spelling!
Maybe those who cannot spell are PC trolls. If they were Mac users, they would be using the OS X spelling features
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/10/07/dell-vs-apple-10-years-later/
You may like this note.
rdf-b.
Grammer Anyone,
Welcome to the WWW. Grammer is not that important. Posters don’t have editors, so get over it.
Yeah! Nothing matters anymore.
BTW, the posters didn’t have competent teachers either.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it actually illegal for someone in his position to intentionally “mis-state” sales figures like this? Investors make decisions based on the word of CEO’s. If he is lying, isn’t that something the SEC would hammer him on?
Every independent estimate of mp3 player market share I’ve seen says Microsoft has anywhere from 2 – 5% market share. So it’s not even remotely close to the 10% that Ballmer states.
@WindozeKiller,
you’re right if it was a small company. but MSFT can change the rules.
come on guys, give monkey boy a break….
naturally he overstated the Zune share. it would be impossible to understate it!
I’m surprised that they managed to sell 1M Zunes. This is the first time I’ve heard sales figures from M$.
Still it is important for Apple to have competition. I went to the Santa Clara Apple Store on Saturday. It’s under renovation so only 1/4 was open and it was crowded as hell. Took a look at the new pods and man they are thin and light. You don’t get that impression on the web. But these new offering show that Apple is still way ahead and intends to stay there.
Windoze, that only applies to other companies. If my name is Bill Gates and my company uses an account to make quarterly earnings match Wall Street expectations, I get a slap on the wrist. Don’t do it again says the SEC and Justice. Unfairly lock in OEMs and lockout competitors and be found as a monopoly, get a slap on the wrist by the Justice department.
Other Chairman and CEOs who falsify company numbers go to prison for 20 to 25 years. See a pattern yet. Thankfully, the EU is not as corrupt as the US oversight organizations.
@rdf-b,
You’re right. Grammer is not that important. Neither is math. You lookin’ for a job, kid?
After the interview, Ballmer was overheard chanting:
squircle…squircle…squircle…
for the grammar police,
not everybody here is a mother tongue English speaker. so take it easy. Einstein had an accent and made lots of English grammar mistakes. get over it.