Filed under: iPod Family, Apple Financial
A million Zunes
TUAW recently reported how 39 million iPod sales for the 2006 fiscal year worked out to over a hundred thousand iPod sales per day. The Zune Insider blog has proudly posted that they expect to sell one million Zune players by June 30 2007, the end of their fiscal year.
The Zune debuted on November 14, so June 30th is approximately 230 days from the first sale date. At a million units, this comes out to about 4300 sales per day. Assuming that Zunes sell around the clock, that's approximately 180 Zunes per hour sold, or roughly 3 Zunes per minute.
Assuming a steady 3 Zune per minute sales rate, it will take over twenty days to sell as many Zunes as Apple currently sells iPods in a single day. And that's not even taking the current holiday-spurred iPod rush into account, which itself may be upwards of 15 million units, or about a half-million iPods per day.
We did the math, so you don't have to.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
PC said 11:47AM on 12-07-2006
Oh come on! Stop it!
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E.T.Cook said 12:00PM on 12-07-2006
You did the math, but thank goodness you didn't do the analysis.
You reference a holiday boost for ipod sales, but assume or insinuate that the same won't hold true for the Zune. This would seem to be relatively irresponsible, as the disparity of increase between both can only be conjectured at the moment. Holiday boosts are typically aggregate in nature, not exclusive to one particular product within a market segment.
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nano_user said 12:05PM on 12-07-2006
Actually, I find this number disturbingly low. Apple is selling a number of different models and a significant iPod accessory and infrastructure world is already in place. I wonder what the numbers are when only the 30GB iPod is considered? It is clearly a much smaller ratio.
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Roberto Felgueiras said 12:17PM on 12-07-2006
I'm hardly a Zune apologist ( I am a three ipod household) but Apple didn't sell 39 mill a year from the get go, it took time and long term marketing to achieve it after five years. My reason for posting is that us mac users/fans should be a little more humble because in all honesty, M$ is a large company with deep pockets. Al they have to do is take a major hit on these and flood the market to push the iPod out. Seriously. They made about 10 Billion profit, clean, for fiscal 2005 they could give away a million Zunes over the next year and not feel it in the wallet. After the product naturally evolves it will get better. The snootier we get, the more unappealing we are perceived by moderate consumers who have no brand loyalty.
I WANT the Zune to get better, it will force apple to make the iPod better in competition. Lets face it, the iPod (main, not nano or shuffle) hasn't changed too drastically for the last two years (+/-). After video was introduced (which coincides with the peek of popularity) no iPod innovation had occurred. Everything had been on the iTunes side.
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Scott F said 1:11PM on 12-07-2006
>You reference a holiday boost for ipod sales, but assume or insinuate that the same won't hold true for the Zune.
Not quite. The Zune sales figure was averaged and included the holiday season. The Zune supporters that provided that data would have included projected holiday sales bumps.
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Josh said 12:29PM on 12-07-2006
Another thing to watch out for is Microsoft's tendency to post fuzzy numbers. They constantly refer to "units shipped to retailers" as 360 sales where most people would think "units purchased from retailers" would make more sense.
But one is clearly the larger figure.
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Nick said 12:38PM on 12-07-2006
The Zune obviously hasn't sold as Microsoft hoped - hence this:
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/microsoft/zune-abandons-hostile-blogosphere-219826.php
One's inclined to wonder if the Zune's crippling DRM has played a part here - although, obviously, that is not the *only* drawback of the player.
I don't think that anyone has fully understood what is going on with the music market yet, but here is an interesting line of thought:
"Why the sudden interest in non-DRMed formats? It appears that the record labels are slowly beginning to realize that they can't have DRMed music and complete control over the online music market at the same time."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061206-8368.html
Never mind the (very cautious) interest in MP3 from EMI here, the basic point seems sound. The labels effectively gave the game to the tech companies (including, primarily, Apple) because they were bent on DRM but had to look to the tech companies to make it work well. Apple is now sitting pretty, although MS isn't - both because it got into the game too late and because the Zune goes too far with DRM. (The Zune, in fact, goes too far with its DRM in not one way but several, including - strikingly - rendering previous purchases with "old" DRM from online stores unusable: they sure don't play "for sure").
The labels could outflank the tech companies, including Apple and Microsoft, at a stroke by selling non-DRM content - say, MP3s - direct from their own sites. But they won't, because they they're scared, because they think people will swap them - as if those who were going to do that aren't already.
Steve Jobs must be laughing all the way to the bank.
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G said 12:52PM on 12-07-2006
Can someone find out how many 2nd Gen Shuffles have sold so far since introduction? Just curious for comparison.
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Mike said 1:38PM on 12-07-2006
If I'm not mistaken, MS said that Zune would be available in 300,000 retail outlets on its initial release. So, 300,000 divided into 1,000,000 equals 3.33333 Zunes per retail outlet. Sure, that's a good reason to devote shelf space to the brick.
For extra credit, how many Zune points are needed to buy 3.3333 Zunes in a store?
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dan the zune man said 2:24PM on 12-07-2006
i have 3 words for you all.
ipods are unreliable. i'm sure most of you reading this site have gone through many more ipods than you have wanted to at their price point.
ipods were just the first to hit the market - a great idea, at a great time. it will only be a matter of time until there are many, many more options on the market - and then your noses will slowly lower back down.
there is already the samsung UMPC. ipods only have 2 capabilities while mobile: listening to music, and watching video on a tiny screen. UMPC's can do all that, and much more, for a slight dollar increase.
think about it people. you have brand loyalty for what? the patented, simple, Apple design? a product that needs to be re-bought or sent back for a new one every few months? cmon now. wake up.
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The Jeremy said 1:52PM on 12-07-2006
There's no way Microsoft will sell one million Zunes within that time period because Microsoft does not employ one million people.
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dogfriend said 2:09PM on 12-07-2006
Jeremy -
You had the same thought I did. I then did the calculation: based on 71553 employees at Microsoft (per Wikipedia) each employee would need to buy 14 Zunes in the next 200 days. Only $3500 per employee.
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Mike Schramm said 2:14PM on 12-07-2006
I think this post belongs in the much needed "Gloat" category :P
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b said 2:48PM on 12-07-2006
Samsung's UMPC's do not cost a few dollars more, they're almost $1000 more and considerably larger...it's not something you can put in your pocket
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jumBo BoB said 3:06PM on 12-07-2006
Knock off the Zune coverage. It's getting annoying.
Here, humble yourself:
Windows based PC's will outsell Mac based PCs by 20 to 1 in 2007 (or, assuming Apple's new "get a mac" push is successful AND Vista falls flat on its face, 15 to 1 at the very best).
TUAW is great without all its "Apple is better than everyone else" garbage. Simply cover Apple. Since we HAVE to use Apples at work you help me to cope while in a dark and fiery place. But TUAW can be so annoying when they gloat over competing products (especially when competing products aren't even 4 weeks old).
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Roberto Felgueiras said 3:08PM on 12-07-2006
The ipod is the best all-round product in the market at this time as well as the past two years, in both service (iTms) and product execution. It has a fantastic store, amazing ease of use and is a status symbol/ubiqutus item label not seen since the walkman. The difference is that this tech is ever evolving, and if any of my fellow mac fan-boys think that this lead is insurmountable, give your head a shake. Like Quark Express when InDesign was released, if you sit on your laurels you can be left behind. InDesign was scoffed at by serious users in the beginning but all it needed was a revision or two to be a serious contender. I want apple to continue to do well, but like adobe, Microsoft has the money to eventually make this work by gen two or three. They can probably ride this out till at least gen five or six before they feel any financial sting, by then they will be making money.
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Don Wilson said 4:03PM on 12-07-2006
Good thing the editors at TUAW isn't biased against microsoft/for apple.
Let's see...
1 Zune model vs. 9 iPod models.
Average price of Zune models: $250 (1.30x more)
Average price of iPod models: $191 (0.76x less)
Years in existance for Zune: 1/12
Years in existance for iPod: 5+
Name recognition for Zune: Nearly nonexistant
Name recognition for iPod: People call all mp3 players 'ipod'
Accessories for Zune: 51 (0.11x less)
Accessories for iPod: 443 (8.68x more)
Color choices for Zune: 3 (0.50x less)
Color choices for iPod: 6 (2.00x more)
Every single listing above suggests that iPod has more of an ability to outsell Zune, especially name recognition and availability of accessories, but I don't see you guys actually reporting on this because apparently, when it comes to Microsoft, facts like these are easily overlooked to provide readers with unfair comparisons.
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Kuswanto said 10:25PM on 12-07-2006
Zune does not distributed at my Country yet..
Hah!!
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Mojo said 6:38AM on 12-08-2006
regardless of 'gloating" and your fuzzy stats (windows doesn't sell pcs, they only license the OS; if you compare apple pc sales vs. other pc manufacturers, your "20/15:1" "stat" is exposed for the soft-headed, misguided mantra you pc fanboys ave been regurgitating for 20 years), the fact remains the zune is a piece of shit. it's clunky, cheap-feeling, rickety and the screen is fuzzy. the "social" crippled wifi and rental song model is a stupid idea that will never take off 'cuz it's stupid. oh, and it comes in turd brown.
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KDT said 2:47PM on 12-08-2006
"1 Zune model vs. 9 iPod models."
True but the *one* 30GB Black iPod is outselling the Zune.
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