It would be really nice to see a reviewer, blogger, or equity analyst rely on something other than the Amazon electronics sales stats to make their point about how Zune sales are lackluster. But, what everyone seems to be ignoring is the incredible effect that tourists will have on Zune sales over the next few months, as they shop for it with their increasingly-powerful Euros, Yen and Pounds.

Gene from ZuneChannel.com

Gene,
Don't kid yourself. Go into any Best Buy, and ask the kids working there how that "zune" thing it selling.

Amazon's stats give a misleading picture: they're *higher* than the nationwide sales would warrant, because of the number of microsoft employees and astroturfers like yourself who bought through Amazon to try to cook the books.

It's very sad, just like the scientologits who buy copies of Elron Hubbard's books over and over to make it look like they're popular.

Time to give up on your MS astroturfing gig, and go get a permanent job somewhere. Maybe the DMV is hiring.

-jcr

Gene, you must be pretty busy trying to patch all the holes in MS Zune propaganda going to hell with all the terrible reviews it's getting along with the terrible sales information.

If Amazon isn't a fair way to gauge Zune sales, why doesn't Microsoft release initial sales figures and tell us all how many have sold during the busy Christmas shopping season? If it's selling of the shelves, show us the proof! Plenty of anectodal evidence has indicated they are taking up and wasting an awful lot of store shelf space and not moving.

Redmond will release Zune in time for Christmas and sell nearly 50, not counting the ones Microsoft will send to Steve Jobs as a lousy joke. MS CEO Steve Ballmer will be arrested for biting a mother on her face in a department store while her son and daughter inspect the offerings at the iPod display. Ballmer will claim the report of the attack was a "gross exaggeration, spread by Microsoft's infinite enemies; I just brushed by her, looking for the Zune display" before settling out of court.

Defects will plague the players (all 42 that will finally be sold) and Microsoft will end up in a law suit with all its media vendors who will charge that Microsoft was refusing to pay royalties after placing a 1/800th of a second of silence at the end of the songs they were selling through Zune and claiming they were all "new, original and innovative works copyrighted Microsoft. Duh."

After 8 months of litigation, the suit will be settled out of court after CEO Ballmer bites through one of the tires on the Sony attorney's Lexus in the court parking lot and is shot with a tranquilizer round by the Washington State Department of Animal Control. Zune will be pulled off the shelves in June 2007 after MS issues a press release describing "its brilliant *pilot* of a massive, galaxy-stretching, mind-expanding portable media program yet to come" as a "total and unquestioned success."

Analysts will point out, however, that after the law suits, media companies were so shocked to find nastier lawyers working for MS than they ever employed, MS was unable to contract any content for the Zune service at all. MS will be forced to start its own recording label and will only be able to sign William Shatner scatting and singing obscene lyrics to television theme songs and, in a desperate play, offer downloadable monster movies of CEO Ballmer stalking and eating his neighbors' pets.

Analysts, newspaper columnists, national security consultants and religious leaders will accurately predict the devastating Vistapocalypse that will attend the release of Vista on Thanksgiving Day, 2007. Microsoft, sure of its success, will make an unprecedented media move buying all of the available commercial air time on the SuperBowl broadcast to demonstrate Vista's "advanced features" during commercial breaks starring William Shatner and CEO Ballmer as 'Spock' aboard the new "Starship Vista."

Breaking with tradition, the spots will air live and will have to be improvised largely by Shatner when Ballmer's bright red Federation officer's jersey becomes hopelessly tangled around his head. "The new Aero screen saver is guaranteed to neutralize erectile dysfunction, hair loss and flatuence, right Science Officer Ballmer?" Shatner will announce, beaming from his familiar captain's chair, while muffled shrieks emanate from the crimson-shrouded head of the shirtless Ballmer, thrashing senselessly, struggling to pull the jersey down over his head.

By the third quarter, newscasters will announce during breaks in the action that Vista had been cracked by Eastern European and Central Asian terrorist groups, had already taken over all the Vista desktops in the western world and were using them to drain corporate bank accounts and send wire transfers to Al Qaeda. Ballmer, interviewed by sportcasters on the scene, will be by then hopelessly entangled in the red jersey with his hands caught in the sleeves and his arms suspended over his shoulders.

Unable to answer their questions with anything more than a strangled scream, Ballmer runs from the TV cameras and head-butts the Astrodome until he is unconscious.

The next day, President Bush will declare, "Now I know what the 'blue screens of death' thing-things were all about. These people are fellow travelleres to Al Qaeda and their collaborators in the Democratic Party," and orders the Justice Department to bring racketeering and terrorism charges against the company.

MS attemtps to deflect the charges by changing its address to a vacant lot in Spokane and ordering its employees to hide their eyes behind their hands while at work on the Redmond campus. CEO Ballmer flees justice and is caught in a dragnet some months later by British Columbia animal control officers, answering a call about an insane pet-eating bear running amock Fort Nelson in northern British Columbia.

There, CEO Ballmer will be shot dead after fatally chewing through the neck of one officer and nearly severing his head from his shoulders. MS finally will collapse as thousands of employees leave, disgusted by the ethics of company convicted of abusive business practices and accused of shoddy engineering, racketeering, terrorism and finally, in the last straw, cannibalism.

The company loses most of its board and finally a court appoints a board of receivers to maintain the company until the Windows operating system can be sold to investors. Microsoft XBOX survives as Shatner buys the division, keeping the tradename 'Microsoft' as the receivers could find no one else to buy the name of a company associated with crime, terrorism, insanity and cannibalism.

Shatner will market a successful range of pornographic outer-space adventure games under the brand for the XBOX.

Considering that the writer and bloggers 1-4 here are comparing sales of ALL iPod products sold internationally against the one Zune offering that ships only to the USA (for now) - a 30G hard drive based media player - I shall simply label him and the other bloggers above as macfanboys. Sales of the Zune are doing very well on all the sites I have checked when you categorize it with other hard drive based mp3 players, as should be done, and not lump it in with cameras and other non-related gadgets.

To compare correctly you need to look at what the device is and look at how it sells next to other such devices. Based on rankings on all those e-stores by popularity in the hard drive based mp3 player sections, I see the Zune’s first offering doing very well. They have taken 9% of total market share in the first 4 days according to the NPD and that is impressive. The first iPods did not fare so well. But did anyone include that here? Nope. Why not?

But, the writer does have MS stock as of 12-01-2006 so he must know the sales will only increase even more and at least has that part right. (but read the disclaimer below)

As far as sales at Best Buy, they got caught with their pants down and have a huge stock of iPods - they simply need to get rid of them and the sales people have been instructed by management to do so. Ask them. They will sell those and their Zunes also, but have to make sure that iPod stock is liquidated by the first of the new year. Simple. E-Stores don't have that problem, if they are smart - they don't take control of the inventory until it ships, which, btw, is why they are all cheaper there. Go look.

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To compare correctly you need to look at what the device is and look at how it sells next to other such devices
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to compare it correctly, you need to know how many sales there are period... it isn't the picture frame company's fault that they figured out a better market than 30gig MP3 players from MSFT... trying to say your MP3 player is the #1 or #2 player on the market (of 30 gig players that start with the letter "Z") is nothing more than fooling yourself...

the Zune's are selling horribly, as can be confirmed by walking into any retail outlet and seeing them sitting on the shelves... and watching brand new Zunes sell for much LESS THAN RETAIL on EBAY... should we reward MSFT for being stupid enough to come out with a harddrive player instead of a flash player? should we reward their "ingenuity" at copying someone else's product and business plan?

As Steve Jobs once said, MSFT has no taste, utterly no taste... and copying poorly someone else's product is an example of MSFT's poor taste....

2 questions:

1) Why do AAPL lovers care so much what MSFT is doing? I don't like MSFT, but if you devote as much time to a comment as #4 did and it is not funny, maybe its time to reevaluate how you spend your time.

2) Jon - Google is rewarded by copying someone else's product . . . because they do it well does that mean they have, well, taste?

I went to my local Fred Meyer (Krogers) today to buy a usb cable, and noticed that there were not any iPods left on their shelf. I asked the clerk about this and he told me that they had run out of iPods yesterday and wouldn't be able to get any more for a few days. He bemoaned the fact that they always run out of iPods this time of year. I asked him how the Zune was selling and he told me that they have sold two black ones since they were stocked last month. I guess the Fred Meyers in Boise, Idaho need to get more tourists in in order to buy these Zunes. What do we have against these foriegners? I just don't know.