Against iPod, Microsoft is Number 2...or 3...or whatever

Interesting article in VentureBeat earlier this month. Microsoft is notorious for fluffing its market figures by emphasizing the positive, so it's been widely noted by analysts, editors and bloggers that the company has been curiously silent on Zune...and now we know why. Only 2 million units have been sold since it launched in late 2006; in comparison, Apple sells a little over 3.5 million iPods a month. It's hard (and maybe unfair) to compare the two figures, as Zune is only sold in the U.S. (and the iPod is global), but one can safely say that Zune is underperforming -- and I don't think its new gaming initiative is going to make up the sales gap.

-posted by Rachel