Zune Now Eligible for Protection Under Endangered Species Act
by John Paczkowski
Posted on May 23, 2008 at 5:01 AM PT
Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?”
Apparently not. And, perhaps, you never will.
GameStop (GME) has stopped selling Zunes. During a quarterly earnings call yesterday, Gamestop CFO David Carlson said the retailer had pulled Microsoft’s (MSFT) media player from the shelves of all 4,400 of its stores. He offered no further details on the move, but according to a GameStop spokesperson, it was inspired by insufficient demand. “We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” the spokesperson told TheStreet.com. “It (also) did not fit with our product mix.”
Your product mix and everyone else’s as well. As mentioned here last week, just 2 million Zunes have been sold since the device’s launch in November 2006. To put that figure in perspective, Apple (AAPL) sold 10.6 million iPods in its last quarter alone.
And so a question: Is GameStop’s decision to dump the Zune the beginning of a wider trend? According to Microsoft, the answer to that question is ‘no.’ “We have a set of great retail partnerships that give Zune a strong presence at retail including Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Target, Wal-Mart, and others,” Adam Sohn, director of marketing for the Zune, said. “We will continue to invest in deep retail partnerships, and have seen good momentum online and at retail over the last few months including a great response to our recent spring update.”
