A million Zunes by June: Microsoft underwhelms us

Stan Beer
Thursday, 07 December 2006 05:42

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft has been bleating over the airwaves that it will have sold one million Zune music players by June 2007. How underwhelming.

Current estimates suggest that there are about 70 million iPods in the marketplace, with sales of new iPods approaching 3 million a month, by the time Microsoft reaches its target of 1 million Zunes, Apple could have close to 90 million iPods in the hands of users.

At Microsoft's predicted sales target, there would be about 20 iPods sold for every Zune that gets purchased. This is hardly an ambitious target for a company that intends to become a major force in the music player business, but probably realistic.

The problem for Microsoft, however, is that, despite a multi-million dollar marketing compaign, at the moment Zune is not even matching it with iPod's competitors such Sandisk's Sansa and Creative's Zen.

This is possibly because the one feature that differentiates Zune - its wireless capabilities - are practically useless at present. There is no wireless connectivity to a PC and a Zune owner will have to look long and hard to find another Zune owner.

Another huge drawback of the Zune is its lack of ability to be used as a USB data storage device. One of my sons used his iPod to store some study notes for a school Science test. Using the iPod wheel he showed me how he could scroll through the notes using the touch rotation. "How cool is that!" he said to me.

How cool indeed - too cool for Microsoft to allow apparently. In the design and marketing of Zune, Microsoft seems to have missed the point about what people want in a portable music player device. Hopefully, on its way to reaching its modest sales target, it will get a clue.