Eideard

Microsoft’s Zune hit the ground even harder in its third holiday quarter. After two years of annual sales that barely reached the million unit mark, the company reported a major new drop in device sales for the winter quarter.

Microsoft’s latest 10-Q filing stated that “Zune platform revenue decreased $100 million or 54% reflecting a decrease in device sales.” The music player’s sharp decline in revenues helped erase 60% of the company’s earnings in its Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes the Xbox gaming platform.

Apple’s iPod business, once feared to be at a dead end with satiated demand, hit a new quarterly unit record with sales of 22.7 million units. That’s just 3% higher than the company’s sales in the year ago quarter, but demonstrates a demand for innovative products even in the midst of difficult economic times.

Apple’s record iPod sales don’t include the iPhone, which Apple has referred to as its “best iPod yet.” With iPhone sales, Apple sold over 27 million mobile devices last quarter, and over 208 million in total since it began selling the iPod.

The article delves briefly into whys and wherefores. My experience in sales with solid products that have an established base – is that inertia doesn’t require much more than talented touch-ups, tweaks and taste to keep rolling. And Apple seems to understand all three qualities.

As early as yesterday evening, reports of 30GB Zunes crashing began to surface on Microsoft support forums and gadget blogs. Microsoft updated the Zune support Web site with the following acknowledgement: “Customers with 30GB Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!”

Microsoft says: “Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.

“That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on.

“If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

How long has Microsoft been in business? How many Leap Years have passed since they started writing software?