Update: Microsoft Hasn't Sold 1 Million Zunes
5:00 pm ET May 29, 2007 - Microsoft now says the San Francisco Chronicle misquoted Robbie Bach, and explains that while it is still on track to sell one million Zunes by the end of June, it hasn't done so just yet.
Cesar Menendez, a product manager for Zune, announced the mistake on the Zune Insider blog Tuesday. However, he does note that, "we've achieved our goal of being the number 2 player in the hard-drive category."
Microsoft is celebrating Tuesday, as the company beat its goal of shipping one million units of the Zune music player several days before its June target, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The player holds about 10 percent of the hard drive based music player market, although overall its market share is around 3 percent. Nonetheless, Microsoft is still happy with its progress.
In comparison, Apple has sold about 25 million iPods during the same period, with nearly 11 million of them being sold in the last quarter. Apple took over a year and a half to reach its first 1 million shipments.
Microsoft Entertainment and Devices president Robbie Bach said reaching the milestone was "a good start," but stopped short of calling it a huge success. "I'm not going to pretend it's some gigantic move," he told the paper.
Expect to see new Zune players in the fall, including flash memory based devices, say sources. The market is important for Microsoft to enter; consumers prefer flash devices, and if the Redmond company wants to increase its market share, that would be the easiest way.
However, there will be no "Zune Phone," Bach says. Microsoft is comfortable with its current offerings in the mobile music space and plans to work with manufacturers to develop software for those purposes.