- Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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365/24 - so expect support for only 15.208333 days a year
Microsoft's Zune is in short supply
THERE ARE shortages of Microsoft Zune, with back orders piling up, said market research firm Isuppli.
But it's not because the VoleDevices are outselling Apple Ipods, oh no, said senior analyst Chris Crotty at Isuppli.
He said: "The question is whether the Zune 80 shortage is teh result of high demand, short supply or some combination of both."
He believes Microsoft "erred on the side of caution" when it placed orders for the gizmos.
"Overall, Microsoft has been surprisingly non aggressive in its approach to the PMP/MP3 player market," he said. Isuppli is predicting that it will ship 211.5 million units and revenues of $19.5 billion this year.
"Microsoft waited nearly a year to follow up on its intiial Zune launch with the Zune 80," but had enough resources to develop products more quickly. Microsoft has delayed in adding more content, in particular video content, to its Zune Marketplace site.
It appears the Vole is showing timidity - not one of its normal attributes. µ
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In all honestly I expected the reason for the Zune to be backordered was that Microsoft made the mistake of not having enough.
Make supplies short, and pretend your item is derisable, because it's not wanted on it's merits (or lack of).
Right, Mark, because the Wii's supplies have actually been extremely small and it's selling out only because Nintendo claims it's popular, and not because it's consistently outselling all other game consoles.

What are you smoking? The Wii's the most-wanted system of the year, and is being shipped and sold in absurd quantities. The desire isn't fake, and it's not due to a short supply. It's due to a higher demand than the supply can manage.

The Zune on the flipside, is obviously an issue because MS looked at how hot the Nano has been and how relatively poorly the original Zune did and assumed it was because flash-based players was the bulk of the market. Turned out the Zune 80's large screen and interface are a bigger turn-on for the Zune buyers. I know it's the one I want.
Somehow, I don't see these numbers as being anywhere near being correct.

They expect MS to sell over 200 MILLION of these in a year? Over $19 BILLION is sales?

That's several times as many iPods as Apple will sell for the year.

Preposterous!

Maybe 2.11 Million in sales.

Someone should check the article for typos. 

Unless this is a time misplaced April Fools joke.
Didnt i read somewhere that on amazon the zune did outsell the iPod.
Ain't no way MS is going to ship 211 million Zunes this year. This has to be a typo, along with that $19 BILLION figure. What was iSuppli really trying to say?
May be MS has found another "RROD" for Zune, too busy fixing it.
Perhaps those figures are for iSuppli as a company... that's how it sounds to me... figures are still pretty big but more feasible, they could also be predicted for the entire industry which would seem very plausible