CNNMoney.com is reporting that the Zune music player from Microsoft edged out SanDisk for the #2 spot in the portable music player department. This, after only 4 days of sales (it came out mid-week).
Shawny Chen, a research analyst for Current Analysis, says that in order to become a serious contender against Apple, Microsoft will have to make further adjustments to the Zune, especially considering the number of unfavorable reviews the device has received so far.
"Microsoft will have to come out with an improved Zune that touches on the very features that people are disappointed with this model, such as the limited WiFi capability," said Chen.
Kathleen Maher, a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research, notes that even if the Zune is off to a slow start in the MP3 player market, Microsoft has had a lot of success launching a new product, tweaking it and ultimately satisfying consumers.
"It doesn't bug them to dump a bunch of money into an experiment and rejigger it along the way," said Maher, pointing at the success of the Xbox. "It's worked reasonably well."
Fortunately for Microsoft, the Zune was built on the same concepts as the Xbox 360, so firmware updates will be able to resolve a lot of issues. One issue Microsoft definitely needs to solve is updating the Zune Marketplace to be based on the final WMP11 bits, instead of being based on a pre-RTM build like it supposedly is now. They should also give you an option for making it visible in WMP11 when plugged into machines where Zune Marketplace is not installed.
[via Search & HPC Blog]