Zune Thoughts: How Well Are The New Zunes Selling?

The new Zunes have been on the market now for a few months - so how well are they selling? We don't know for sure, because no one has released any market share reports. Yesterday, the Zune 80 was #95 on Amazon's Top 100 Electronic list, and today it's not listed. On the Amazon MP3 Player list, things look a bit more in context - the Zune 80 is #25, the black Zune 30 is #28, the brown Zune is #36, and the black Zune 8 is #42. That's below every type of iPod (not surprising) but also below the SanDisk Sansa Clip, the Creative Zen (it's worth noting it's heavily discounted - only $89.99 for the 4 GB model), and a few other brands.

When the first generation Zune came out, the prevailing wisdom at the time (amongst us Zune fans at least) said that because Flash memory-based players out-sold hard drive-based players, once there was a Flash-based Zune, it would do some serious numbers compared to its spinning magnetic platter counterpart. Yet most signs seem to indicate otherwise, if the Amazon sales charts are to be believed. I wonder, when the first market research report comes in, how well will the second generation Zunes have done against not only the iPod, but also against the numbers that the first-generation Zune did? We'll have to wait and see..