Just checked. The new Zune update didn't add East Asian language support. MS has once again helped me decided to support the iPod.

MS sees fit to muscle into this market. They only work in MTP mode and there's no usable software to use them on the Mac. I might have considered one since unlike many other non-iPod mp3 players they support AAC. I think it is very interesting to see their sales numbers are so low. I really assumed they had already muscled more market share. Afterall there seems to be a lot of IT people who default to MS for everything. Now I wonder how well Sansa is doing.

of the Zune here. It was making fun of the sales for MS's iPod killer. I wouldn't bash the Zune, I have owned iPods since Gen 2 and never had one regret. I really couldn't care less about the Zune, really.

it doesn't matter. they'll keep at it and be a step behind the competition until creative and sansa disappear and it's only them and apple. that is what they do.

and zune bashing is not petty. why should i have to use one to despise this company's obnoxious practices? what is the zune and zune marketplace other than a ripoff of what's went before? they've f*&ked the playforsure people so they can have their own environment. i don't have to use one to comment on it.

Apple in its latest quarter sold 10.6 million iPods, or more than five times Microsoft's cumulative sales to date.

wow. Can you say, 'pwn3d'? I'll restate that... in the latest quarter, Apple sold five times more iPods than the cumulative sales for Zune, to date.

Good luck with that, Microsoft. You'd have to include a free bag of the chronic with every purchase, to have any hope of approaching parity with iPod.

It just got smart playlist support *this week*? Are you freakin' kidding me?! How much do you have to hate Apple to put up with something so inferior?

You have the Apple MP3 Players You have all the rest.

Basically MS is competing against all the rest, and all the rest have better players then MS. Its just that simple.

I think that it's the start of the end for Microsoft. Nothing will happen tomorrow, but the Zune is possibly their last arrogant attempt at making something knowingly inferior and imitative and passing it off on ignorant consumers for profit. What's tragic is that they can't do better. It's a very different marketplace from 20 years ago, and this exhausted, cynical strategy has been embarrassed again and again. So... bash away!

Wow, I guess some folks here just don't have a sense of humor. I think I said it was petty to bash the Zune and then turned around and said to leave that for us folks who actually bought them....which is a tongue-and-cheek way of saying that I was bashing the Zune. jeez..

xoch, MS didn't make a substandard player. The Zune 80 and smaller Zune are actually very well built machines...it isn't inferior when compared to the iPod Classic (which is what it competes with).

The only thing substandard is the marketing nonsense that has put such limitation on so many DAPs, not just MS.

I have yet to understand why Apple, MS, Sony (store now defunct in the West), etc feel the need to add DRM to songs when the song can be freely purchased on CD without and DRM. Why are they "protecting" the lower quality songs versus the DRM-free CD???

I don't care about the Zune much anymore as I have two iPods, but I think the comparison of Zune and iPod sales is fundamentally flawed.

The comparison was of the last quarter sales of the iPod (well established brand) versus the total sales of the Zune since Nov. 2006.

A fair comparison would be to compare the total Zune sales to Apple sales during its first 1.5 years of the iPod's life.

I all too clearly remember having to use EphPod (or the program by the makers of MacDrive...I think) to get my songs on my 1st Gen iPod because iTunes didn't exist for use PC users.

Using these two disparate figures means absolutely nothing. If you look at Wiki and read some of the charts you will see that the iPod only sold about 970,000 in its first six quarters of sales.

go ask the distribution companies why they insist on the DRM encoded tracks in their deal with Apple.

tbh i'm beggining to get a little sick of people blaming Apple for having DRM in their store. the music distribution companies dictate the terms of sale to Apple and *they* insist on the DRM being added. Apple has publicly stated and demonstrated that they are interested in distributing DRM free music.

Their business model for the iPod+iTunes ecosystem has never really required the store to do anything but cover its costs so they dont really have a huge amount to gain from it being tied to the iPod.

Now I'm not saying Apple is averse to making a buck, their a corporation and their are legally required to plunder all of us consumers for every penny we're prepared to spend with them. However, my gut feeling is that Apple is quite content to make its huge margin on the iPod and the store is really only their as a means to get content to their high margin device.

I didn't just "blame" Apple,but also MS, Sony etc.

It is not just the record labels. You say it isn't partially Apple's fault. Yet, I can buy many songs on Amazon (not just indie stuff) with no DRM, but the same exact song on iTunes has DRM. That makes no sense whatsoever. If the song is available without DRM on Amazon, then (according to Jobs) Apple should sell it without DRM as well...but they don't.

This article sheds no real light on how well the Zune is actually doing. First off you should compare sales at a category level. For example Zune 80 to the Ipod Classic, Zune Flash to the Ipod Nano. Lumping everything together hardly tells a true story. All though I’m sure that apple is selling far more unit then MSFT is. If you‘re saying that Microsoft increased its market share from 3 to 4 percent, that’s an increased of 33 percent. In a mature market that’s pretty good. It would also be interesting to see where MSFT’s market share is at a category level that might be 3rd overall, but might be second in the hard drive based units.

I don’t think Microsoft’s strategy is market share dominance at this point in the game. Mobile devices and mp3 players are converging ever so quickly. I bet this is MSFT’s attempt at creating a wining formula for consumer-oriented mobile device software. If you look at there recent purchase of Danger and the development of Winmo 7. I won’t be surprised to see a consumer oriented os in the near future that is least able to compete with the Apple.

"A fair comparison would be to compare the total Zune sales to Apple sales during its first 1.5 years of the iPod's life."

fair? how so, few owned an mp3 player then. they weren't hot, people didn't know. is was the dawn. so how is that fair?

and you're right, i missed your clever dig at the zune. still, you bought TWO of them! dear god man, you'll not find any sympathy here!

go and read up via http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/05/why-apple-is-more-expensive-than-amazon.html in order to educate yourself about DRM

Ha ha ha. That's so funny...call me zwiebel, Name calling...heh heh. What is next, you are going to take my sandbox shovel away?

nat, Yes, it is a fair comparison because there were other mp3 players at the time...even hard drive based models. Also, there were other portable music players as well. The point is that you cannot expect a new product that has been out for 1.5 years to compete with a product that has been out (and is now entrenched) for almost 7 years. This is not a hard concept.

"That makes no sense whatsoever. If the song is available without DRM on Amazon, then (according to Jobs) Apple should sell it without DRM as well...but they don't."

You obviously don't know anything about the Recording Industry... You're right it doesn't make any sense. But IT IS the record labels that set the terms of the contracts, not the music sites. Apple HAS demonstrated that it is willing to sell DRM-free music, there are many tracks on iTunes that can be purchased without DRM. They are all from the EMI label and various indie labels. It was a deal they made with the record label. This has been talked about ad nauseam. You should give Google a whirl.

"it is a fair comparison because there were other mp3 players at the time...even hard drive based models"

You cannot make a comparison like that, especially after the size of the market has changed so dramatically since then. That's like trying to compare how many computers Apple sold in its first two years compared to how many Dell sold. Which would be silly, because the computer market had changed completely by then. Currently the MP3 player market size is probably around 60+ million yearly, that same market at the time the iPod was introduced, was probably only a couple million at best.

a lot of these comments (about small market share) that seem to gloat could also apply, uh, to Macs. The bottom line is - does the Zune make much of a profit? If it does, it is a success. If it doesn't, it's a failure. Even if they had 50% market share, that would be the only useful criterion to apply to a business, surely? What is startling about Apple is not market share, but the huge profits they make in an industry that is set on tiny margins.

mjtomlin, So you are saying that when a new product is released it should therefore immediately sell as many units as an entrenched product with 7 years of sales under its belt? The market may have changed, but it hasn't changed that much. There isn't a big enough market for the Zune (or any other player) to just reach the same sales levels as the iPod, especially in only 1.5 years. The market has pretty much stagnated. iPod sales are no longer increasing at the same rate as they did in the last three to four years. They may be increasing, but not at the incredible rate they did from late 2004 up to now. So how is any company supposed to sell the number of units that Apple has sold, hmm? ophiochos has a very valid point. In the long run( note LONG run), if a company can make a profit, even if they sell less of a product, that is all that matters.

The funny part of all this poo-pooing of the Zune is that it doesn't matter. Apple will fail regarding the iPod...someday. The same thing happened to Sony. Sony should (and most likely would have) taken over the DAP market if it had been more able to see further down the road and was more willing to take a chance. Apple took off with the iPod mainly because there was no serious competition until it was too late.

Give it another 15 years and all the young kids will be sporting their new ________ music player.

You could have read reviews on the Zune and found out its features beforehand instead of buying the player and returning it. In my opinion that is a waste of time and energy. I would rather stick to my 160GB iPod but that's my choice.

while i have neither an ipod OR zune i'd be only too happy to consider a zune as it has a built-in fm radio

fwit - i've been an ACTIVE m$ basher for over a decade but don't feel, or believe, that the zune can really be 'that bad'

anyhoo, with a 32GB (v2) iPhone out next month, it is -for me- all somewhat academic now

ciao roberto

apeintheshell, Unfortunately, most folks who review a music player don't take into consideration unicode support as most westerners (and even fewer Zune owners) don't listen to Jpop, etc. If I could have confirmed the lack of support, I would not have bought and then returned the Zunes. Read most iPod reviews; again, very few mention unicode support.

In regards to the iPhone, no thanks. I don't need a fancy mobile. I would get the iPod Touch if the thing had the ability to act as a storage device. You would think that the Touch would be a prime candidate for data storage. .doc, .pdf, .txt, etc. Add in handwriting recognition (at the level of Vista's or better, NOT inkwell - Apple should be ashamed for not furthering inkwell) and that little device could actually be used as a subnotebook.

Bash the zune? Why not. It has all the elements of a bashable product. It imitates the last generation product of it's competition, has playback issues. Deals with sales in points rather than dollars and it's "social" features are pointless, as nobody owns the fricken things.

More than fanboy-ism, I think people get concerned about what would happen to music if MS were in Apple's shoes. The though of Ballmer behind the scenes of the music world creep me out--no end.

The points scheme and DRM are the real deal killers for this product.

Your comparison to the first 6 months of the iPod being on the marketplace is flawed. You cannot compare absolute figures: 970,000 ipods in its first 6 quarters versus 2m Zunes in its first 6? quarters. You need to compare marketshare percentages, not absolute numbers. How many of all the MP3 players sold during the iPod's first 6 months were iPods versus another brand. I think you will find that the 970,000 iPods was a much bigger accomplishment then than 2m Zunes is now. But I admit to not have any "proof" of that at the moment. But my point is that you cannot simply compare the raw numbers. You need to compare what those numbers mean out of the total market for that sort of product during the time periods looked at.

Hey, I think I figured out how the Zune sold two million!

MS has 80,000 employees worldwide. I think you can expect that each and every one of them got one, then got a Gen 2 when they came out.

That's 160,000 right there.

Add the company memorandum (that I just made up) that orders employees to buy only Zunes rather than iPods for xmas gifts, figure an average of five per employee for friends and family ... let's call that half a million just to round up a bit.

Add the freebies to press and pundits, then add a million in unsold stock around the various retail outlets in the US (MS counts them as sold because they are sold to wholesalers), and we're at 1.7M.

The other 300,000? Actually sold to actual non-MS connected people.

lamewing, not a hard concept at all, and even though it's been explained to you several times you are still missing it. oh well, we tried.

...take a picture of one of these so-called Zune thingies. i don't think they actually exist, except on the etherwebs and in print ads for microsoft.

2 million, huh? are they counting each hand in each ad in every magazine?

seriously, never seen one in the wild, and doubt i ever will.

My local music store has had a Zune on display for many months now; not even the hayseeds here will buy one. I always go over to inspect it, see how it's aging, when I go to buy my music legally.

I stopped listening to FM years before the MP3 player revolution (who ever wanted some corporation to decide what lo-fi music I'd hear in between all the commercials), so the Zune, for me, holds no attraction.

"By the way, the Zune bashing is petty, especially if you haven't even used one...leave that to us who have bought and returned them." -- lamewing

That's more telling a comment than I've seen on the Zune yet.

FM radio (and even AM) is not only used for music, but also for talk radio. I realize most folks under 30 don't really care, but I listen to NPR at least two hours a day. An FM radio on any player is a nice extra.

nat, The market was not all that different back when the iPod first came out. While there were only one or two other HDD-based players on the market, it was competing against PCDP (portable cd players), minidisc players/recorders, etc. You have yet to explain how you expect any company bringing an mp3 player to market now (in the U.S.) to sell enough units on a quarterly basis to match the iPod sales. Once again, an entrenched product is going to sell better compared to a new product, especially when they compete for the same market share (the mp3 market share isn't increasing thanks to the poor economy.

No matter if the Zune (or other players) were to increase their sales numbers by 10 fold in a quarter, you still would see articles claiming the iPod sales are crushing the compettion, as well as fanboys promoting this misuse of statistical information.

lamewing said:

"It is not just the record labels. You say it isn't partially Apple's fault. Yet, I can buy many songs on Amazon (not just indie stuff) with no DRM, but the same exact song on iTunes has DRM. That makes no sense whatsoever. If the song is available without DRM on Amazon, then (according to Jobs) Apple should sell it without DRM as well...but they don't."

Actually lamewing, there is a very known reason why Amazon gets more DRM free music than Apple. Please do some research before making such comments. It's really and truly the labels fault on this one. They are intentionally trying to break Apple's hold on the digital music distribution market. Believe me, I'm not the type to defend Apple even when they are wrong, but in this case, you're barking up the wrong tree. Blame the labels.

that people evaluate the success and even the quality of Zune based on its sales compared to iPod's. We could use also the same criteria to evaluate the success and even the quality of MacOS compared to Windows.