Have fun in Vegas! Lucky SOB ;)

Question; I'm hearing that the Zune software doesn't support last.fm, because it doesn't support third party extensions? How can I be welcomed "to the social" if I can't scrobble? Any chances of this getting fixed?

Hey Cesar, where's the big headline on Zuneinsider trumpeting the Zune's market share for the holiday season. You were quick  to post the first week numbers; not so quick to post this one!  ;-)

http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/01/05/final-holiday-sales-zune-comes-in-fourth/

I'm just joshing you! The interesting thing here seems to be that the market appears to be expanding. It doesn't look like Microsoft is taking significant market share from competitors - yet - but rather that there are more people entering the market for mp3 players. Does that jibe with what you're seeing?

Cheers - Dan

Dan, that's consistent with what I'm saying. And I don't really see Zune as competing with a flash based mp3 player. It would be interesting to see data on 30 GB mp3/video players.

I think things will get worse for the iPod competitors next week.

Ceasar,

I hope that Zune DOES help grow the market as a whole because that will be good for ALL makers of mp3 players, and those of us who use them. I'm also optimistic that a potential side affect of Zune's entry into the market will be a move away from DRM-wrapped muisc to a more open format by the big 4 music companies. I think they will soon have no choice if they really want digital music to take off.

I believe the data on hard-drive based players had Zune at 12% of holiday sales. http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/01/05/zune-and-ipod-sales-during-the-holidays/  The problem for Microsoft is that it doesn't really matter what type of iPod people are buying - hard drive or flash - each one is potentially locking them into Apple's ecosystem for a few years as they will purchase songs and accessories that can only be used with the iPod.

It will be interesting to see what announcements come out of CES and Macworld that will impact this market in '07.

Cheers - Dan

Speaking of market numbers, I was at the local Circuit City last night and they were sold out of Zune players and about 80% of the accessories.  Looks like you might be doing pretty good out there.  I am curious how the final numbers will add up.  

Dan, you raise an excellent point - each person that buys an flash ipod, *does* lock someone into iTunes model, but only sort of. I don't have any data to back this up, but my guess is that the majority of digital music out there comes from ripped CDs. And, of course. . . MP3 Friday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufj08QCR0KQ&eurl=

Ceasar, I think more of the "locking in" comes from all the accessories that people by that use the proprietary dock connector. I have a dock connected to my stereo at home. I have a connection in my car. I also have a dock in the office so that I use.

A competitor is going to have to have a friggin' amazing device in order to make me wanna replace all my accessories and move away from my iPod; it would cost me more to replace my accessories that it would to buy a Zune! I don't think I'm alone as you can see by the huge iPod acceessory market.

Great tunes.  Thanks for sharing.

Zune updates on the pipeline, Cesar?  Looks like the zune.net is offline. Look forward to any announcements you have this week.  Keep up the good work.

Just a hiccup on the web serve and a nice dream.  Will still keep my eyes peeled on the announcements this week.

I think the most important thing that Zune does for the market is demonstrate that you don't have to mimic Apple's user interface.  Everyone I have used uses the same tree type menu system.  MS have broken away from the Apples cloning and tried something new.  Now I haven't used a Sony player in many years because I am not a masochist and would rather eat my own spleen than use Sony software again.  I have only used creative's and iriver's players in the past, can anyone think of a player that doesn't use the ' back and forth' Apple-esque interface?

OK that made no snese whatsoever.  What I meant to say was that i haven't used sony stuff in years so anyone who has one may wnat to comment on their UI.  Also that MS have not cloned the Apple interface like so many before them.

I apologise, I was clearly temporariy posessed by a 4 year old whose first language isn't English.

so matt, you ended up getting a zune, eh?  hi-five!

So Cesar, How's CES treating you?  And should we expect some interesting Zune Stuff coming out of the Gate's Keynote????