Zune takes #2 spot in retail launch week

Sandisk, move over buddy, there's a new gun in town. According to NPD's weekly point of sale data collections (which, as we understand it, cull aggregate sales figures from all the top electronics retailers), during the Zune's launch week Microsoft captured a 9% unit share and a 13% dollar share (total cash spent) in the portable media device space. (Comparatively, Apple's iPod range snagged 63% unit share and $72.5 percent dollar share.) Now granted, this figure should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Not because of its accuracy -- since we're quite sure it's totally accurate -- but because a week spent #2 in unit share does not make a device #2 in market share, not by a long shot. Furthermore, those retail figures do not include Apple stores, where droves of customers flock to purchase their iPods, and more importantly, because that's launch week and any new device (especially one so hyped as the Zune) will almost always set its sales records during its week of launch. In other words: sorry Zune fanboys, this is going to be a war of attrition, and while launch week numbers might foretell the Zune's place in the not too distant future, they shouldn't be used as hard and fast figures for today's split up of the market.