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.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-29-2006 @ 7:42AM
sergey said...
good news ^-)
12-29-2006 @ 8:57AM
Gene said...
Amazon is not a "pretty decent yardstick for sales", considering that there are 30,000 retail outlets through which Zune is being sold. And considering that Zune had been out for a total of 6 weeks prior to Christmas - vs. 5+ years for iPod - there's no legitimate way to compare sales of one against the other. MSFT has already said that this is a 10 year initiative, so you might want to revisit this comparison a few years from now.
It'll be interesting to see how many iPods are returned from gift-recipients who already have a very bad initial experience with the iTunes store shutting them out. That's an untold story...
Gene from ZuneChannel.com
12-29-2006 @ 9:25AM
Tommo_UK said...
Lol "Gene from Zunechannel!" You made me giggle out loud. It will be more interesting to see how many Zunes get returned and changed for iPods by gift recipients who discover it won't work with iTunes. Nice try though.