Zune breaks 2 million sold, stealing market from Creative not Apple
By Paul Miller 
posted May 10th 2008 2:38PM
posted May 10th 2008 2:38PM
Please note: If you're a current Engadget commenter, you do not need to re-register. Simply login and you will be prompted to select a username.
KOOL, cant wait for it to come to uk
I imported mine into the UK from ebay and I can't say I have any regrets.
I imported one to the UK. Everything works great (even the radio after I found the Europe option in the menu).
Yeah, but does Microsoft *still* give money to Universal music for every Zune sold out of the arrogant assumption that all Zunes will be used for pirated music? All of my music is either from my own purchased CDs or purchased from Amazon. So, I despise that Microsoft is giving Universal Music money on my "behalf".
I keep hearing comments about the iPod selling 10 million within a single quarter, but do people even think when they make that comment to trump the 2 million Zunes sold.
Is that 10+ million in every market the iPod sells in, which is every market? The Zune only has one to sell in.
And does that data include every iPod that exists, including older generation models, dirt cheap Shuffles, and refurbished units, which seem to exist in massive amounts everywhere for extremely low prices?
I would imagine the Zune is no different, since a large number of sales were due to the 30G being sold for 100+ bucks.
I would love to have someone clear up this information for those iPod sales. Because if thats the case, then thats not all that impressive for the iPod.
@ Fusion
Should be as popular as Gordon Brown, and a little less cool!
and you can all have fun soon not being able to watch your own video content because unless its from microsoft its tagged illegal!
I had a 30 gig Creative Vision M.
A good player.
But i was maxed on space.
So i wanted an 80.
I looked at ipod and zune.
I chose the Zune because it has the radio.
I heard the ipod also had crappy audio sound.
From alot of people.
The Creative had awesome playback sound, plus a EQ.
I was slightly pissed there was no EQ on the 80 gig zune.
But i have gotten used to the standard setting.
It is clear and crisp sound for sure.
If it sounded like crap i would have gotten rid of it.
Maybe they can add a EQ thru a software update?
All in all though i would buy another zune, over an apple simply for the lack of a radio in the apple.
That's partially because people with iPods are already committed to iPod/iTunes and that's fine with me because I like my iPod. But I can't say I hate the Zune. I wouldn't really know unless I tried one out. They have come a long way since the ugly ass brown model so I would probably like Zune.
Brown was the only thing cool and different about the me-too Zune, and they killed that.
The problem with the Zune isn't the device, it is the ecosystem (software, accessories, etc) or lack thereof.
I have had owned a 2nd, 3rd and 5.5 generation Ipod. About a year ago I lost my 5.5. Instead of dropping another 300+ dollars on a new Ipod, I decided to give a 99 dollar refurbished Zune a try form woot.com. My honest opinion was that I liked the Zune device very much. I found the controls on the device easy to use, and I just liked the make and fee of it much better then that of the Ipod. I also liked having the larger screen. With that being said, the Zune software is atrocious. It is slow and boated. It takes forever to open, and even longer for it to load album art. It brings my dual core Pentium with 1 gig of ram running Vista to a crawl. I realize that I do not have a cutting edge system by any means, but it is still a newer computer. On top of all that, I find the Zune software to be confusing and not very intuitive. I made a legitimate effort with Zune, the device was great but the software was just horrible.
"Zune software is atrocious. It is slow and boated. It takes forever to open, and even longer for it to load album art."
A lot of people say the same thing about iTunes. Personally, the only trouble I ever had with iTunes was early ver. 7 on my PC, like so many other people did. What I do love about iTunes is just the way it handles everything so easily for me. It did take me a while to get used to the interface as I had been using MusicMatch and loved that, but now I can't imagine being without my iTunes. Still, the screenshots I've seen of Zune look pretty sharp.
Really? For me, it's the other way around. iTunes is slow as hell and Zune runs much faster, while at the same time probably looking nicer.
Vista? One gig of ram? I think in order for it to only be going at a crawl, it would have to be speeding up.
There is your problem Lexx, not only are you running a really slow processor (it's a single core with hyper threads- if you have the hyper threading edition, not a dual core), and 1GB of RAM- both of which isn't going to run Vista itself very well- what makes you think anything else would run quickly? I'm sure if you tried to load up iTunes on that setup, it would run just as poorly.
"Engadget rules." - the main theme in this topic.
10 bucks says Microsoft sent them the zune to review with that tagline already engraved to try to suckup and get good rankings from them.
@ Matthew
Hello, that's a mock-up done by Engadget to show what the Joy Division Zune might look like.
...awaiting certain fanboys to include their "inaccurate, only 3 Zunes were ever sold" comment.
it wasn't 3, they actually made it to 112 sold.
http://zunesalesarealie.com
They can't have only sold 3, I've seen at least 4 in the wild! Of course, I see at least that many iphones everyday (from different people), so take that for what you will.
All snark aside, MS really should release a Mac client, so more people (like me) who don't us Windows but aren't married to the ipod might give it a try.
People with an iPhone want to be seen using it though, if you've got a Zune it's more for functionality than fashion...
@Cal: Yeah; I wouldn't want anyone to know I used a Zune either.
Haha. I kid. If it works for you great. I found the interface to be fairly frustrating though. I also don't care for the iPod interface on the iPhone though. The interface for the rest of the functions on the iPhone is great though.
Cal, so when I keep my iPhone in my front pocket and use my bluetooth I want to be seen? Or, maybe when I am browsing the web and I need to touch the screen I am doing that because I want to be seen, not because I'm looking at a Web page or my mail or something?
Thanks for clearing that up. Really.
craig just got real mad about something that is not worth getting mad about
Not mad at all. Just pointing out that Cal is a trolling flamebaiter.
feel baited much?
Actually I wasn't trolling or flamebaiting, my comment was based on my personal experiences. People I know with an iPhone often whip them out for no apparent reason to do something completely pointless, such as randomly checking wikipedia to see what happened on this day in the past (most recent occurrence of this). Also don't try to act like bluetooth or web browsing are anything special, people have been doing this kind of stuff on their phones (presuming they have a vaguely decent one) for years, yet they suddenly feel the urge to do so more once they get an iPhone...
I also find that most, emphasis on MOST, people who buy an apple product, such as the iPhone or iPod do so without even looking at the competition, but rather just seeing the marketing, the apple logo and the 'i' and instantly presuming that that is the best option. However I have to give credit the apple here for their very clever use of marketing. So that explains why I believe most people buy iProducts based on fashion or sheep-mentality, as for why the Zune is more about functionality, just go look at any Zune 2 vs this gen iPod.
If you've got it, flaunt it!!!
I'm proud to be one of the few Australians to own a Zune (I've got a Zune80), my friend being another one of a few - and my mum about to be another.
Everyone at school is like "WTF is 'dat?" and automatically says "My iPod is better" and then I show them the features and mention that the price is the same and they just walk away... just walk away...
Yes, the ever sarcastic Engadget. 2 Million sold is 2 Million sold and I know where two of those are. And unlike Sandisk or Creative, Zune does not have 30 different models.
Now about the marketshare is it cumalative or current sales this quarter/year etc?
The 2.5 update is nice.
Why so sour Miller?
Nice? Its not nice at all. Zune sales are slowing, even after the new ones were released. This is terrible news for Microsoft and their plans of putting a dent in iPod sales.
Not to mention there isn't much more growth left in the overall PMP market. iPods have reached saturation and Apple so is creating a new mobile wifi platform with the Touch and iPhone to compensate.
I was merely commenting on how a software update which adds some nice new features didn't really merit the scathing tone of the article.
I'm not really sure why you're talking to me about sales figures, I didn't say anything about them.
Why is your username 007?
Because I'm James Bond . . . Obviously.
You should have said
I'm Bond... James Bond.
See now because you didn't say that you lost ALL credibility.
using the word "billionty" even while joking, makes the poster lose all credibility.
...coming from someone with a pie as an avatar.
I like pie.
Apple, pecan, poontang....
*sigh* was never the same since you left Dwayne. Come back and then I'll start watching again.
Well done, Esat, well done.
I dont know why you've never heard of it. Its a perfectly cromulent word.
The pie for your avatar looks absolutely yummy. Did you bake it yourself while updating your Zune?
Dude,pie is awesome.
Dutch apple pie is my fav.
Come to think of it,pie just might be better than Chuck Norris.
Praise Pie
Dude, dutch apple pie sucks. ITS DUTCH, and we are AMERICAN. AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE??? Hello? Only regular apple pie should be sold.
Seriously, though, dutch apple pie does suck. The crust is too sweet, regular is a lot better.
@rv
Well,maybe I like to have a near diabetic experience everytime I eat pie.
But if it's the american pie that is stuffed full of different kinds of apples,then I couldn't pass up a slice of that
And don't forget the caramel sauce on top...mmhmm.
I think marketshare stated in the article is cumulative. But agree with other posts, the iPod has had a longer life than the Zune so whoever has one will stick to the iPod - not much point of switching if both the iPod/Zune offer the same thing (give or take and completely personal preference).
I'm sticking with my Creative Zen Vision: M until I see something significantly better or feel the need to upgrade, none of which have happened yet, but it's good to see the Zune doing pretty well
I've never seen anyone with a zune (seriously) ...
Then you need to get out more. Seriously.
i have. keep an eye out. people with the zunes are usually ones with their hair well cut, close toed shoes, shirts/ties, and jobs involving science/engineering/medicine.
You mean people who are over 25, and who DON'T mooch off their parents?
@Eddy Alvarez: Are you sure about that? It's certainly not who they're marketing to.
Hey I've got 2 Zunes, and I see people with them almost everyday. I see about 2 new people every week in my school with one, and each week there will be another 2 people that get them (on average). I can already see their market share growing (at least in my school).. Hopefully it will be more like this in the rest of the world when the Zune goes global
Well, I do keep an eye out. I see about 90% iPods and the rest are not Zunes (creatice, SanDisk, Sony, etc. I have seen exactly one Zune in the wild, a .Net software engineer at my company has one. All the rest of the developers have iPods and iPhones, and a fair number of them have Macs...
Seriously. I have a friend who says he's never seen anyone with a Zune, but then again, he is legally blind. But he also said his seeing eye dog, Rex, told him he hasn't seen one either.
It's been said that you can see thousands of Zunes up in the Seattle area. Bill Gates hands them out at his mansion on Halloween day for trick or treat. The thing is, the Zune isn't the treat.
I've never seen anyone with a Zune either. Seriously.
I'm starting to suspect that at least a million of those 2+ million sold are found only on the streets of Redmond.
janitor at my school has a zune
my 2 cents
Zune 80 user here, and love it. Of course, I don't walk around holding it in my hand all day. I'll usually have it hooked up to my car stereo, or I'll pull it out of my pocket to put a specific playlist on, then it goes back into the pocket.
I don't know what "seeing one" has to do with anything...unless I need to stare at it the whole day, holding it within torso region, just to listen to music. But that really makes it hard to get any work done, so I don't do that.
last week, i turned on the wireless on my zune and found 4 others in the same room with zunes, there may have been more ipods, but they couldnt share their music,pictures, and video, it may only be three listens but its better than nothing!
Take that wierd Zune tattoo guy.
What an absurd article.
How about trying to match apples to apples instead of total market share of mp3 players?
That's like comparing the iphone to all other cellular phones. Engadget have any market share numbers for the iphone world wide? I'm guessing it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.001% off all cellular phones.
Exactly. Let's see some numbers about per-quarter shipments/sales or something of that nature.
Yeah Engadget, why don't you find the iPhones total global marketshare and post it? I'm pretty sure when you compare it with Nokia's total domination of the market, it will be highly laughable.
Infact, I bet that the manufacturers of those chinese knockoffs that you guys are always posting about have more global marketshare than the iPhone!
Nokia had better start praying to it's Norse gods or whatever, that Apple doesn't decide to go into the cellphone business in all price ranges, because Nokia's stock would probably collapse in six months. Of course, Apple has more sense than that to compete with the Dell of the cellphone business.
Selling $25 handsets to third-world countries isn't much of a profit-making business. Nokia is going to start trying to sell more handsets in North America. Good luck with them on that. They better start figuring how to sell more smartphones up there in icy Finland after Apple introduces the 3G iPhone in that region. That'll be the Finnish of Nokia. Oh, I meant finish of Nokia.
Steffen, I'll let you know that Nokia makes most of their money from the cheap phones and don't even try to tell me that there's not a lot of money in that. Have you seen their profits reports?
Apple will never be a threat to Nokia and that's just plain and simple fact. working up from the 0% global marketshare of Apple to the 40% of Nokia would be a simply huge task that would cost billions. Nokia have NOTHING to worry about. Besides, they still have the best featured phones available in the western world.
Umm, the difference between the Zune and the iPhone? The iPhone is successful and the Zune is not. The iPhone's market share is growing much faster than the Zune's. Moron.
Andrew Danks ... why let facts get in the way of your argument?
282 MILLION cellular handsets were shipped in Q1 2008. Total iPhones sold worldwide in Q1? How about 1.7m? Since you seem to struggle with math let me help you out - that's 0.6% of the entire cellular phone market.
Then you make another brilliant statement that the market share for the iPhone is growing at a quicker rate than the Zune. Wrong again genius. Total volume for the iPhone dropped 26% from Q4 2007 to Q1 2008 as did global market share from 0.7% to the now 0.6%.
If you read the above article you would see that Zune's marketshare has INCREASED as opposed to iPhones which has DECREASED.
With all of the iPhone posts (at least 1/day) you would think Engadget might want to report Q1 numbers. Somehow they miss this news and decide instead to bash the Zune despite the fact that there is some growth.
why don't YOU compare apples to apples and compare the iphone to each specific model of phone being sold instead of comparing it to the whole cellphone market...
ROFL, good job comparing sales of a DAP to sales of a cellphone. Although DAPs and cellphones are becoming more and more integrated, the Zune and the iPhone are in two different markets.
My N95 does everything I need, and with a 12GB memory card I have plenty of space to use it as my mp3 player. The only negative would be the battery life but it's a small price to pay for such a good package; I doubt i'll ever buy another standalone music player, smartphones FTW.
This is exactly why Nokia are the number 1 Mp3 player manufacturer and camera manufacturer in the world, although they don't make any standalone Mp3 players and cameras.
Amazing, isn't it?
I've only got an N80 and have the say that I'll never be able to go back to a basic mobile phone...
the iphone is used more for uploading photos to flickr than the n95
Joy division FTW!!
really, am I the only person who recognized the engraving?
Yes.
that's a shame.
No, you're not - you're probably just the only person who didn't notice it a few weeks ago when they originally posted it (their concept of what the 'joy division zune' might look like).
quit hatin' on the zune..competition is good..
why did he get low ranked? He's right, competition creates better products at lower prices.
apparantly lots of people on engadget are convinced that competition is horrible and that everyone should just let apple own everything.
Keep in mind the zune is just available in a few markets unlike the ipod which is technically sold anywhere.
I have never seen the zune out in the wild either. Who knew Microsoft employs 2 million people.
Yeah I doubt MS employees are included in this, as they probably wouldn't be seen as "sales numbers" if MS never sold them to their employees and just gave 'em away. So yeah, your theory about MS hiring 2 million people to use Zunes is false.
Well, Microsoft doesn't actually see sales as actual sales.
They count a sale as something that has been shipped, but not sold.
For all you know there may be 1.5 million Zunes in some store rotting away.
If the next update has Chinese language support, then I'd probably getting one. I mean, Zune has been out for a while, just wonder why Microsoft hasn't supported more languages? It shouldn't be that hard for Microsoft to address that problem imo. Well, I'm glad that Apple did it in the right way at the first place.
Because there target market is America, where barely anyone speaks Chinese.
I'm glad it's making progress. I like mine.
I think they were saying it has not really made much progress.
Had my Zune for close to a year and LOVE the machine but HATE the software for the 'puter. MOST user-unfriendly, imho. I would never recommend buying a Zune because of it.
My thoughts exactly, you have to go through hell to get to the good stuff, actually using the player.
As for this news, I think it's nice. Microsoft is in this for the long haul. If it takes years for them to build up serious competition against Apple, so be it. It's past time for their quasi-monopoly to die.
+1
I really really like the Zune player itself, but the computer-side software is the absolute frickin pits. I used to think iTunes for Windows was absolute crap until I started using the Zune program. *barf*! it's absolutely awful. Typical MS though, do something 90% great, 10% so spectacularly awful as to undo everything else good about it.
Give MS a chance on the software front!
Anyone else remember trying to use an iPod with a PC pre-iTunes - total nightmare.
agreed. I tried the zune software on my pc and it was completely non-user friendly. It was actually the reason I got an iPod at the time.
The only problem I have had with the Zune software is a bit of lag when first starting it. The hardware more than makes up for it... That and sometimes editing things doesn't work, but I find pressing Enter makes it work no matter what.
Overall, if you're looking for a new player, don't listen to people claiming that the software is horrid enough to make it not worth it, because thats pretty much just bull.
I guess this tells us the size of the Apple-hater market compared to market at large.
Make that 2 million +1. I'm getting one as soon as my ipod dies (pretty soon, flimsy little thing!). I HATE itunes - worst media software I have had the misfortune of using, and yes I have used a lot. Typical Apple product, all looks no substance, but after years of grey and white minimalism, guess im sick and its more like no-looks-no-substance. /end rant.
iTunes is all looks no substance, huh?
Well, be prepared to be disappointed with the Zune desktop software. Ratings? barely. Smart platlists? Nope. MP3 tag editing? Nope. It pretty much does nothing outside of simple playback and offers nothing to power users, but it is very pretty to look at.
Not to mention, Microsoft completely changed the Zune desktop software between versions 1.0 and 2.0, redefining the UI and removing key features in the process. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to the few people who have invested their time into the Zune ecosystem (or other WMP/PlaysForSure systems) only to have Microsoft repeatedly pull the rug out from under them. Buyer beware.
@mark
Don't forget (in 2.5):
- Gapless Playback
- Social Networking
- - Subscribe to friends' ZuneCards (in software and on device)
- - Auto-download most recent songs/top artists/etc from friends if you have ZunePass
- - Badges/Rankings (top listeners for artist/album)
- - XNA Games for Zune (via XNA Game Studio 3.0 now in CTP)
What an amazing accomplishment. For a "me too" product, selling 2 million is a huge win against the partners that MS has royally stabbed in the back. The Zune had many cutting edge updates and revisions recently. By adding color and etchings it really pushed the sales mark over the top. Copying features already present on iPods was a bonus. No wonder the entertainment division at MS was so proud to announce their profitability this quarter. The Zune certainly is a game changing product for them.
hmm and what features did it copy again? ability for anyone to write their own games and distribute them freely? Or maybe the features that were already present in the first version of the software that they added back? Or were you talking about the integration of zune cards into the zune itself so you can keep track of friends on it? Oops, guess you made a completly baseless statement