Zune Thoughts: Misleading 9% First Week Market Share

We have all heard of the report by NPD Group that in the Zune's first week, it captured 9% of all sales. However, what most of you have not heard is that the NPD Group does not count any sales from Amazon.com, Walmart, or Apple Stores, says the well-informed Adrian of ZDNet. Walmart is very big in North America, especially during the Christmas season, and Amazon is the internet version of Walmart. This explains how the Zune was doing "so well" but was still very low on the Amazon top sold electronics list. Also, I am willing to bet at least a large chunk of iPod purchases are from Apple Stores, yet the NPD doesn't count them at all. I doubt it's because they don't feel like it, but probably because the stores do not want to give them that information.

So while the Zune did get 9% of portable media players, it is misleading because three extremely large MP3 player retailers were taken out of the picture. If the writers who initially reported the 9% market share knew about the exclusion of these 3 retailers and didn't mention it because they wanted to make the Zune look better, I am honestly disappointed. A good writer shows the positives and negatives of anything.