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Zune breaks 2 million sold, stealing market from Creative

engadget.com — Microsoft is still toiling away at the Zune, but there isn't a whole terrible much to show for it so far in regards to market impact. They just broke the 2 million mark, almost a year after they hit 1 million in May 2007. That means growth has hardly accelerated since the second-gen players hit the scene.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 11, 2008

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  • diggafrica, on 05/11/2008, -37/+190I bought a Zune last month & i think its highly underated by the Media . Its a great player and its a shame the media always has to kiss apple's products ass and give them unlimited publicity, Zune deserves some attention .
  • jstad, on 05/11/2008, -16/+129The Zune has continued to improve while the Zen hasn't done much since its inception in my opinion this is no surprise.
  • LOLSteelBullet, on 05/11/2008, -34/+100I love my zune. Its easy to work and I haven't seen anyone return a zune to the service desk where I work but I've seen a ton of iPods returned. I think the zune suffers from what I call "LOLMicrosoft" syndrome.
  • zip22, on 05/11/2008, -13/+70that could be due to the fact that there have been 63 million ipods sold in the same time period as 2 million zunes.
  • rivalius13, on 05/11/2008, -6/+50Creative haven't touched their hard drive based players in years, MS seem to work pretty well when they are the underdog. It's natural that the would erode Creatives position.
  • MavRevMatt, on 05/11/2008, -5/+39No. I'd say at least 75% of the people who have iPods or Zunes don't want or need a smartphone.
  • WinMacLin, on 05/11/2008, -18/+46I own an iPod, but if I was going to get a a WMA player (I use a Mac so I'd have to switch to Windows too probably to sync it). I would get a Zune. I mean the Zune just looks really nice, has a great price and a lot of storage. It's features rival the other non-iPod players.
  • namelessXsilent, on 05/11/2008, -13/+40i loved my zune when i used it, but the damn software they use is horrible to get all your songs together
  • Meekers, on 05/11/2008, -3/+26That rumor came out earlier in the week was already shown to be completely false.
  • PabloIV, on 05/11/2008, -15/+36I'm still using my green-brown 30gig player and software updates have always kept it nice and up to date.
    It's the Microsoft stigma that's keeping a great player down
  • bebopredux, on 05/11/2008, -13/+33Ballmer's Zune collection just hit 1,900,000
  • Trax91, on 05/11/2008, -5/+24***** yourself.
  • radzack, on 12/02/2008, -11/+30The iPod is a great device. The zune is a great device. That being said. I don't use a zune, but would totally be ok with using one. I love the menu interface!
  • ozid, on 05/11/2008, -5/+24oh yeah i totally would rather have a shutdown timer and a graphic equalizer instead of the music sharing and zune marketplace/live integration.
  • inactive, on 05/11/2008, -12/+33My 30g Zune is a effing solid piece of hardware. I don't know how many times I've dropped it from waist level onto the concrete below. It really is a decent piece of hardware, just a few tweakings to the software, and overall it will be one hell of a product.
  • ryansmith18, on 05/11/2008, -2/+22Although I agree that those are a couple of EASY things they could add to the Zune....they are both pretty small additions. I wouldn't turn down a Zune because it didn't have a clock.
  • u8myfoood, on 05/11/2008, -4/+20Well, Creative WAS the first to release a 32gb Flash drive player, with an expandable SDHC slot.
    Besides other than the stone, all the other mp3 players in their line up have build in microphones (VERY USEFUL for recording lectures) and have radio tuners.
    But one problem is that they are still too fat for the iPod crowd, also the zune has the reminiscent metal back plate from the iPod, as well as the somewhat circular click wheel looking thing.
  • AmazingAndrex, on 05/11/2008, -2/+17http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2008/05/07/just-so- ...

    Official blog.
  • Davey, on 05/11/2008, -5/+20Do the record companies still receive money for every Zune sold?
  • pazimzadeh, on 05/11/2008, -1/+15but it's not publicized much I don't think...
    I didn't know about any of the features you just mentioned
  • FutureGuy, on 05/11/2008, -4/+18Ditto, I bought a first gen Zune for 100$, got the 2.0 upgrade for free, and its awesome. Haven't come across anyone else doing that, great customer service. The media is so pro apple that everything else no matter how good gets a second hand treatment.
  • mrferg, on 05/11/2008, -6/+20Yup, and I'm using the same Zune I bought in November 2006.
  • frostedflakes, on 05/11/2008, -9/+23That's an awesome Joy Division back plate. The customization of the Zune's design is quite a nice touch. I like my Zune a lot; after going through 5 iPod replacements, I made the "switch" to Microsoft. How ironic.
  • Lynxpro, on 05/11/2008, -0/+13...just as Creative hasn't touched their Soundblaster drivers and accompanying software...
  • CancerBomb, on 05/11/2008, -0/+12DIgging a comment up or down to vote "no" or "yes" makes a lot more sense than spamming the thread with hundreds of comments that just say "no" or "yes" and do absolutely nothing to contribute to the discussion, especially since no one cares what any individual user's opinion is.
  • CiDaemon, on 05/11/2008, -3/+15No, you didn't.

    "Its features rival those of other players".

  • bweltondav, on 05/11/2008, -0/+12Sounds like there's something wrong with zune that you bought, since playing .mp3 files is certainly something it should be able to do. All the same, the M is a great player.
  • JoeRockEHF, on 05/11/2008, -8/+20I have a first gen Zune and its better than all the other iPod competitors in my opinion.
  • tbone8978, on 05/11/2008, -1/+12That wasn't funny...at all
  • Ganja420, on 05/11/2008, -1/+13The fact they let the old zunes upgrade to 2.0 firmware is a major plus in my book.
  • slothlovechunk, on 05/11/2008, -2/+13It is a little ironic *****. Next time you correct someone, make sure they've actually done something wrong.

    Everyone would expect that if people are switching that they are switching to Macs from Microsoft products, not visa versa, hence the irony. Now, this may not be a general expectation for mp3 players, but extending the very existent general expectations from the operating system world to mp3 players is not that big of a stretch. Certainly not big enough to jump down someone's throat over.

    The annoying part of the original poster's usage is unnecessarily putting "switch" in quotes. Not their proper use of the word ironic.
  • MillionsLivio, on 05/11/2008, -3/+14As a former iPod owner, I love my Zune 80. Honestly the fanboyism becomes so apparent once the "Zune" name is mentioned, if you haven't tried the Zune do not insult it. iPod obviously owns the MP3 market and it will take time for them to progress; look at the Xbox and Playstation. It's being released in Canada very soon as well.
  • ray4389, on 05/12/2008, -1/+11I love my Zune--I use the music subscription service which allows me to be legal and download any band I want. They surprisingly have smaller bands that I can check out easily. I'm sorry, Bittorrent can't beat my subscription. Zune Marketplace + Zune 80 + podcasting > iPod
  • TheXeno, on 05/11/2008, -2/+11Launch over there is June 13th. :) 'Bout freakin' time, hope they get out there across the Atlantic too in due order as well.
  • RobbieF, on 05/11/2008, -6/+17...and it's just going to get better and better:)

    With the 2.5 firmware, Zunes (all zunes) can now do XNA apps and games. Check it: www.zuneboards.com
  • Meekers, on 05/11/2008, -12/+21I asked my parents for an ipod over a year ago, right after the zune came out, and they got the zune instead. I have been extremely happy with the result. It is an incredible player with a surprisingly nice screen for its size. The stream of solid updates have kept my old model feeling fresh. I am definitely going to get another zune when I need to replace this one, but at over a year old this one runs even better then it did when new, thanks to the updates.
  • rivalius13, on 05/11/2008, -0/+10Even Hilary touches equipment more than Creative, amirite?
  • Jereso, on 05/11/2008, -2/+12There is no Microsoft DRM in the Zune Marketplace. It's all DRM-free,
  • PueSi, on 05/12/2008, -2/+10Not everybody likes to suck Steve Jobs *****...
  • keeperofkeys, on 05/11/2008, -0/+9I just had to go and check this for myself, but ***** me, you're right!
    http://www.zune.net/en-us/marketplace/default.htm
    (*****, I sound like a TV ad voiceover...)
    Can I buy music for my Archos there?
  • johnpaul191, on 05/11/2008, -0/+9You think that somebody would set up bootcamp, or buy parallels and then buy a copy of vista just to use a Zune? That's got to effectively double the price of the thing.
  • Snokage, on 05/11/2008, -0/+8ugh yes
  • NiceGuyVan, on 05/11/2008, -9/+18As an owner of an 80GB Zune who just updated to 2.5 firmware, no it's not underrated. MS needs to stop sitting on their hands and give us what we've been begging for since Zune launched. Stuff like a clock, and USB harddrive support
  • AJC1ne, on 05/11/2008, -12/+21I love my Zune. I also love the dedication to continued improvement that the Zune team has. The latest update to the software brings a lot of functionality and pretty much eliminates a lot of the problems that people had with it. The frequent updates to the actual device keep bringing added functionality, and the social site just underwent a major upgrade. With a team so dedicated to make sure their device and service is the best it could be, I think that people are underestimating Microsoft's efforts in the mp3 player market.
  • Jambi, on 05/11/2008, -6/+15Apple fanboys. OS/hardware fanboys pretty much ruin every decent discussion about software or hardware here on Digg. I'm a Mac user, but I can certainly admit that the Zune (v2) is very nicely designed and runs very smoothly. If there was a Mac version, I'd likely buy one the next time I needed a music player.
  • inactive, on 05/11/2008, -0/+8It has since the Zune 2.0 firmware update, which was months ago.
  • Seizure, on 05/11/2008, -13/+23I'm noticing a trend of all the pro-zune comments getting dugg down indiscriminately. Honestly, though, there's nothing debilitatingly wrong with the zune; in fact MS has made a very fair iPod contender. I have several friends who have switched from the iPod camp to the zune camp and haven't looked back, and frankly I think it's great that there's now something out there to put some level of competition into the high end MP3 player market. So where's all the hate coming from?
  • bweltondav, on 05/11/2008, -0/+8No doubt. I dropped my black ipod on the carpet and it died--couldn't do a thing to get it working again. Later on I bought a Zune and in my infinite clumsiness have dropped it on several different hard surfaces. The thing keeps on going no matter what I throw at it.
  • chiefbandit2200, on 05/11/2008, -0/+8Me too :) It turns out those "***** bricks" hold up pretty well...
  • bweltondav, on 05/11/2008, -3/+11The Zen Micro certainly has a lot of great features, but I think the Zune's user interface is the best in the market. Plus, I don't really see myself using any of the features you listed. I think it's all a matter of choice really--some people are really into having all of those features, but those people constitute a very, /very/ small part of the market. All most people want is an mp3 player that "plays music."
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