Zune at 1.9% of all mp 3 players according to npd, who we know don't get their data from all sources selling players like the Apple stores and the Apple online store.
ipodobserver.com
If you took the npd numbers at face value and assume Apple's 62.2% translated into 16 million players, that would make msft's zune numbers look like close to a half a million players this quarter. That would be decent. If you say that the actual share for zune is half that because of the way that npd collects its numbers, it still looks like about a quarter of a million players. I think this number will be closer to the actual sales for zune. If Zune can really hit these types of numbers, that probably wouldn't be bad because it would be just related to hard drive based players just sold in the United States. What would be more interesting to see what kind of staying power the Zune would have would be to see how many players were sold in the first week versus the rest of the holiday season. Also, if the software problems were as pervasive as some of the sites are suggesting, it will be interesting to see what kind of returns the retailers are seeing.
If you look at the number of zune players in the US per person, a quarter million zunes sold would be 1 in 1200 people making it somewhat difficult to find another person with one. If you assume that about half are on college campuses and lets say there are about 10 million people on campuses, the number drops to 1 in 80 and the odds become better but still not great. If MSFT can hit its numbers of a million sold by June, the numbers get significantly better.
With the players going head to head on Amazon and the Zune numbers consistently being below most of the other hard drive based players, it would be hard to see that the npd numbers would hold up. What MSFT sells this quarter will be related to the initial curiosity on the device as well as those wanting to buck the trend. The next couple of quarters will tell if there is any staying power to the device. It will also be interesting to see what kind of things that MSFT does with version 2 as well as when they do it. If they don't come out with a new version in the first half of the year, I think that will be a problem for them, especially if it is not out by graduation time.
I think another potential problem for MSFT is if the stories about the european hack is true. If that is the case, you might see some of the record labels pulling their support for the Zune marketplace putting any MSFT player at a distinct disadvantage.
Always interesting to speculate on the numbers.
Good luck.
Neal |
