Media player wars: Blow-by-blow on Amazon

What sold more during the recent holiday shopping season: Microsoft's Zune or Apple's iPod? All hands point to the iPod, which again appears poised to be a blowout success for sales during its fifth holiday selling season. Sure, it wasn't the hottest digital music player in 2001, but over five years sales have snowballed.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a pretty decent yardstick for sales of all kinds of electronic gadgets and products. The numbers the retailer releases are a good indicator of where sales are going to break down everywhere else -- online and off-line.

This year, the world's largest online retailer has already said that the iPod in all its variations has steadily outsold the Zune, although to be fair Zune hasn't had much time to build up a big head of foam like the iPod has over the last half-decade. The iPod's brand alone will be one of the hardest competitive battles ole' Softie has ever faced -- if it resolves to be a longtime competitor that can actually compete with a decent and formidable overall customer experience.