Technology
Microsoft Takes Early MP3 Silver
Katie Dean
11/29/06 - 01:59 PM EST
New numbers from a market research firm indicate that Microsoft (MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) surpassed SanDisk (SNDK - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) as the No. 2 vendor of MP3 players behind Apple (AAPL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) during the week of the Zune debut.
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.
"Microsoft attracted early adopters in a successful launch week for Zune, eking out SanDisk as the No. 2 digital audio player vendor," NPD's Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis, said in a statement. "This was especially impressive given the Zune's single capacity configuration and relatively high price point."
Still, the Zune was outsold by players that are compatible with Microsoft's PlaysForSure technology as a group, he said.
PlaysForSure prevents unauthorized copying of music and ensures that songs sold from music services like Napster (NAPS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and RealNetworks' (RNWK - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) Rhapsody will play on a variety of different MP3 players. Portable devices that run Windows-based software are compatible with PlaysForSure, but Microsoft's own Zune is not.
The new statistics are a bit of encouraging news for the beleaguered behemoth which has received less-than-stellar reviews of its new music player and has been handily outsold by its competitors on sites like Amazon.com (AMZN - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) since the holiday shopping season kicked off on Friday.
Microsoft shares added 21 cents to $29.60 in recent trading on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Apple slipped 19 cents to $91.62 while SanDisk shed 84 cents to $43.93.