I have yet to witness a single purchase of a Zune at retailers who carry both Zunes and iPods. I have witnessed countless purchases of iPods at those same retailers in the time since the Zune was introduced. Unless Micro$oft is directing all of their employees to buy Zunes, I have seen absolutely no interest at retail by consumers for even considering a Zune. In typical Micro$oft fashion I'm sure that Micro$oft's sales figures are as phony as their phony Zune "fan" websites!
Yea, you're absolutely right - a million sounds like a great number. And sure, they could sell a million Zune's but Apple will probably be at around 120-130 MILLION ipods. Apple will be more than happy if Ms keeps selling a million Zune's a year - by the end of 2007, it's be 1.75 million Zune's to 200 million ipods ... and you're right, channel stuffing is a tradition as old as time and like the Amazon Xbox 360 for $100 deal, they can afford to trade off the difference in "co-op" or advertising allowance - giving them another write off.
Here's the deal: My Wife and I went to Linen's & Thinsg this weekend only to find a plethora of iPOD prodcuts. When we got in line the lady behind us had a $100 iPOD accessory and as the days get closer to XMAS these will start flying off the shelves like hot potatoes..
Zune accessories: Zero
There's one flaw in your analysis:
NPD has traditionally underestimated actual XBox 360 sales to the point that they are worthless for predicting real sales.
NPD reported 670,000 XBox 360 sales (approx) for the the Sept Q. Real sales came in 34% higher. It gets worse; in 1Q06 NPD estimated 600k in unit sales. MSFT reported 1.7m. 2q06 NPD: 793k in sales; MSFT 1.8m.
MSFT doesn't need to stuff the channel to hit their number. The problem is NPD is extremely poor at capturing true sell-through of 360 consoles. Sorry that it doesn't fit with the MSFT-evil bias you have going, but the numbers dont lie.
Aren't you ignoring the fact that Microsoft's 10 million Xbox 360 target is a global target? NPD only captures US data, and the Xbox 360 is selling a reasonable number of units in Europe.
There are many retailers that sell little or no MS computer software. It is very difficult to blackmail them into buying excess 360 with threats of a possible shortage of upcoming Vista and Office.
Commenting by HaloScan
