iPod’s Throne is shaking by Universal and Zune
“Considering it is a new brand, it’s a very good first-week showing,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry for NPD Group.
Microsoft’s (up $0.15 to $29.54, Charts) Zune took 9 percent of digital player sales, according to NPD, edging out Sandisk (down $0.85 to $43.92, Charts), but behind Apple (down $1.09 to $90.72, Charts), whose iPod models have long dominated the MP3 player market.”
Even though many people were predicting the failure of Zune player launch, the figures say opposite: mp3 player from Microsoft attracted the views of the customers, and the sales of Zune are slowly increasing. In my opinion, if the situation remains the same, Zune will become the main iPod competitor on the market.
But Zune is not the only problem Apple has to force, according to the latest news:
Universal, the world’s largest music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi, was the first major record label to strike an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to receive a fee for every Zune digital media player sold.
In other words, playing with ‘piracy problem’ in case of mp3 players’ market, Universal wants to get some income from Apple. If they agree on the same points with Apple, the process of modifying, upgrading iPods to make them harder to compete will be harder.
As an iPod user, I used to store more non-music data on it: I had there all the lab docs, two ghosts for backing up my computers. Talking about the music there, most of it was legal, not counting some home made remixes and live concert mp3’s.
What will be the reply of Jobs for Universal and what will Apple upgrade in iPods to keep its number 1 position in market sales - this will be quite interesting.