As Sportsunit noted, Zune has debuted in the number two spot, according to early NPD data. We’re happy to see this but we know this is going to be multi-year investment. Quoting thestreet.com:

For the week ended Nov. 18, Microsoft had a 9% unit share and 13%
dollar share of the U.S. portable player market, while Apple had 63%
unit share and 72.5% dollar share. 

Also, retailers are telling us that they’ve seen Zune delivering
incremental sales, and that’s resulting in growth of the category. So
Zune sales are not simply nibbling on the competition’s market share,
but rather our approach seems to be driving addtional interest in the
space.

One final note about this: Lots of folks have been quoting the rankings
on Amazon.com to gauge how well Zune is selling. I would say that
Amazon is a great way to tell how Zune is selling. . . but only on
Amazon. Zune is sold at over 30,000 retail outlets across the country -
so for the overall market, we’re sticking with NPD.


More as I have more.