Zune zurprisingly fails to crack top 10 for holiday sales

Looks like our pals in the Microsoft sales department may have gotten little more than a lump of coal in their stocking this year. Though the company had high hopes for their ridiculously-named Zune portable media player, the final sales analysis shows that the Zune equated to little more than a nick in Apple's armor. Market research firm Current Analysis tracked sales at big retail outlets like Best Buy, Circuit City and CompUSA and has now released their data on holiday sales. Despite the fact that Current does not track sales at either Apple's online or retail stores (where the company sells a significant number of iPods), various species of iPod still held eight spots on the list of the ten best-selling hard drive-based media players. The other two spots on the list belonged to players manufactured by SanDisk. That's bad news for the Zune, which was aggressively marketed as an alternative to the ubiquitous iPod. "Microsoft did well for a newcomer, but it was competing in a segment that accounted for only one-fifth of all holiday sales," Current Analysis Research Director Samir Bhavnani stressed.

For more on the Zune:
- see this CNET story