NBC11 out of San Francisco is reporting that Microsoft Zune sales have to continued to struggle despite the start of the holiday shopping season. Many retailers are reporting that shoppers are virtually ignoring the new portable media player.

According to Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group, the player’s colors and form factor could also be hurting the overall sales of the product. Mr. Enderle was quoted as saying “They want it to be small. They want it to be sexy,” - and apparently brown isn’t very sexy after all.

Of course everyone by now knows that Microsoft chose brown as one of their Zune launch colors mostly because their research pointed to brown being the new hot color. That might be the case but it certainly hasn’t helped the sales of the product. Of course if brown was truly the only color of the Zune, then the color could be blamed, but there are white and black colors of the Zune so really.. could the color play that much of a factor? The overall form factor could however be leading to lower sales.

However, I believe the true impact of the low sales is primarily from a marketing standpoint. Not enough people know about the Zune.

I remember going out to BestBuy during the PS3 launch and talking about the Zune to several young college kids. Most of them never even heard of the Zune. Sure the online gadget community knows about this product but the average joe surely doesn’t.  However, say the word “iPod” and everyone and their grandmothers know that product. So not only do you have to overcome the iPod as a noun in our vocabulary, you need to make a point in establishing the word “Zune”. Zune should just flow from someone’s mouth and everyone around you should know what you’re talking about.

Ok.. that’s my 2 cents on the issue. But going back to the original NBC11 article - yes the sales are lagging and people aren’t buying the brown colored Zunes. For what it’s worth, I purchased the black color myself. :)

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