Just how many Zunes/iPods were under the Christmas tree could be somewhat judged by the increase in traffic that the Zune and iTunes website received on Christmas Day.
The Zune site jumped up 392 percent Christmas Day compared to Christmas Eve. The site also showed a 299 percent increase in traffic from last year. The large increase over the year before does much to reflect the positive impact the new Zunes have had on the market vs the widely criticized first release just before Christmas in 2006.
Apple continued to dominate however, with iTunes getting six times the traffic that the Zune music site got. iTunes jumped 339 percent from Christmas Eve to Christmas day, less of a jump than the Zune site but Hitwise reported that the iTunes website market share was .68 percent while the Zune website market share was just .009 percent.
The Apple store was also a huge hit on Christmas Day jumping 169% over last year.
Black Friday was full of surprises and the one that no even thought to expect was: The Zune beat out the iPod in top selling online products. That’s right folks, in fact, the iPod didn’t even make it to the top ten!
This is the list:
1. Nintendo Wii Console
2. Microsoft Zune 30GB Media Player - Brown
3. TomTom ONE 3rd Edition GPS
4. Activision Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock Bundle
5. Canon PowerShot SD1000 Silver Digital Camera
6. Microsoft Office 2004 Student and Teacher
7. Western Digital My Book Essential Edition External 500GB Hard Drive
8. Magellan Maestro 3100 GPS
9. Canon PowerShot SD750 Digital Camera
10. Canon EOS Regel XTi Black SLR Digital Camera
Speculators over the surprise second best selling Zune have said that it is in part due to the extremely low price of the first 30GB Zune which has been selling below $100 (old price $249), the new upgrades to the Zune which the old Zune can get free, and the new look and feel of the new Zunes. The old and new Zunes were both selling at about the same rate for the holiday weekend.
Dancing with the pink bunnies, and swimming with the jelly fish… This is the dreamland of the new Zune ads. Ads which have dropped the ambiguous “welcome to the social”, a tagline that only works if there is a social.
The new ads promoting the new Zunes are tagged “You Make It You”. The ads are supposed to be a series of video animated worlds that showcases the many Zune features including that of music, podcasts, radio and pictures.
To me it seemed like Alice entering Wonderland filled with Energizer bunnies and some good psychedelics.
The new Zunes may not have too much effect on the iPod world but they could definitely have an effect on Carmella Lyman’s, the SanDisk PR spokesperson.
She has promised ZDNet writer, David Berlind, that she would shave her head if the Zune took over SanDisks coveted number two spot behind the iPod. Provided, of course, if she wins Robbie Bach, president of the Zune division at Microsoft, shaves his.
She is probably pretty safe in that currently the Zune is number four in the MP3 marketplace with only three percent. SanDisk in second place has ten percent.
Robbie Bach, pledged second place by the end of Christmas saying, “When we’re done with the holiday, people will look and say, ‘There’s Apple and there’s Microsoft.’ The reality of the numerics are that Apple will still be No. 1.”
Bach has until the 31st to accept Lyman’s challenge.
The Zune may not have met most blogging standards as the hippest most up to date utterly cool device on the MP3 market, yet it has taken the market share it had hoped for and with the release of new reformatted Zunes coming out this Christmas season it is liable to take more of that market share.
This means that someone is losing market share and while the iPod and the iPhone are still in complete control it is Creative, maker of Zen players, that is suffering the biggest loss since the onslaught of the Zune.
Creative’s stock fell to it’s lowest point in the last 11 years after Creative announced its fifth loss in the last six quarters. Over the last year the stock has lost 35 percent and is the worst performer on Singapore’s benchmark Straits Times Index landing today at $6.60. Sales have fallen 28 percent to $162.2 million in fourth quarter earnings.
One way to get fired and quickly is to make a video of your boss, who just happens to be Steve Ballmer, dancing away to the iPod - funny as all get out, but definitly amounted to a quick firing. Still he will forever be remembered on YouTube.
Maybe they are just “repositories for stolen music” after all, as Doug Morris the Universal CEO, so eloquently stated last November when explaining why Microsoft was paying the music labels for every Zune sold. He also said that they should be getting paid for the stolen music. If that is the case they may have to charge a lot more than a $1 as a UK survey showed not such great news.
A survey conducted in the UK by Entertainment Media Research says that 43 percent of the people surveyed downloaded music illegally up from 36 percent one year ago.
Why? Well the reason given by 91 percent of the people was simple “Its free.”
The pirated music downloads have risen in all age groups in the UK in direct correspondence to the rise in the amount of little music players people own. 77 percent of people now own a MP3 music player of some kind up from 57 percent last year and 37 percent the year before.
“We have seen the rumors floating around, but we haven’t announced specific dates or details for the next generation of the Zune devices or service. That said, Zune follows the cycle of the consumer electronics cycle so you can expect an update later this year prior to the holiday season,†a Microsoft Corp. spokesman said in an interview with Whiz Byte web-site.
So thus we can expect to see new Zune’s floating around as Microsoft obviously hasn’t given up on the venture, perhaps hoping to at some point to actually compete with Apple.
Microsoft indicated they would be adding new sizes, (perhaps a nano and shuffle like Zune), styles, and price points.
They said they would be building support for video, podcasting and adding key differentiators to separate them from the rest of the market indicating the wireless features and an FM tuner.
I sometimes forget it’s still out there, but apparently it is not only out there but a new Zune is coming!
Word of the new Zune, expected to be in stores by December, is that it will support Flash, WiFi and video playback.
The new Zune will come in 4GB and 8GB, same storage as the iPhone (and we’re not reading into that!) but for competing with the Nano. The new Zune is code named Draco - (not the actual name just the code name but we’ll see if it sticks).
This news comes from Zune Scene who has an inside source hiding out in the Microsoft labyrinth. (no names will be revealed even if threatened with jail time!)
Just how many Zunes/iPods were under the Christmas tree could be somewhat judged by the increase in traffic that the Zune and iTunes website received on Christmas Day.
The new Zunes may not have too much effect on the iPod world but they could definitely have an effect on Carmella Lyman’s, the SanDisk PR spokesperson.
The Zune may not have met most blogging standards as the hippest most up to date utterly cool device on the MP3 market, yet it has taken the market share it had hoped for and with the release of new reformatted Zunes coming out this Christmas season it is liable to take more of that market share.
A survey conducted in the UK by Entertainment Media Research says that 43 percent of the people surveyed downloaded music illegally up from 36 percent one year ago.
