First, they misquoted the Wired article, which said 80% of those who owned music players owned iPods.

Second, I doubt Microsoft WMA-based players will gain market share in player devices, especially since the iPod shuffle is going to gain 30% or more of the flash-based market. It would likely gain some of the hard-disk drive based market, but when you had less than 8%, it's hard to go anywhere but up.

Third, maybe Microsoft's own store will gain a couple of percentage points in the music store market, but it will likely be at the expense of other WMA stores (or Real).

BillG is forgetting that the music player is viewed as a consumer electronics device and not as a computer. People seem to accept that computers are hard-to-use and put up with all kinds of crap for fear of looking dumb-illiterate. But they don't accept that crap when it comes to consumer electronics. So choice doesn't mean much - simplicity, ease-of-use, just works, wins here.

[quote="Guest"]First, they misquoted the Wired article, which said 80% of those who owned music players owned iPods.

No, that comment is categorically wrong!

Directly from the WIRED story...

"About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering."

No, that's not what the artical says. It says 80% of all employees at Microsoft own and use an iPod at work.

The Wired artical says 80% of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod.

There's a difference there. A big one.

Having just spent four hours updating a pc and removing various malware for my dad I agree. I'd love to get him a mac, but he's scared of something different and pretty much terrified by this machine. But many people expect to be afraid of computers - erroniously thinking that computers are clever and they are dumb. My dad can work a tape machine however (although not a video). As more of us get left behind by the increasing pace of technology more of us will seek out devices that we can use. If Bill wants to capture the market he should realise that it is not about choice. Choice helps those people who know the difference between AAC, MP3 and Ogg. My dad just wants something that he can make work. He doesn't want choice - he wants something, anything, that he can derive some functionality from. The iPod can be beat, but it's more likely to be beat by Apple than MS (although if I knew how to beat it I wouldn't be posting here - I'd be on a yacht with Lisa Bonet).

Teens like cool.
Baby boomers want it just works.
In-between welcome both.

iPod fulfills the needs of all of the above.

I want some of what mister Gates is drinking...that's some potent Koolaid.

It will be easy for Micrsoft to gain MP3 player marketshare when they start from 0, it's only up from the bottom, LOL. Even the non Apple MP3's use the same chipset as Apple and it's not Microsoft based at all.

Oh yes, consumers want more choice than Apple offers. This is why Apple has 70% of the market.

Hey, WRONG! Do you understand how sentences are constructed? Guess not. Let's look at the Wired article which you so graciously quoted for me: "About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering."

Read carefully. It's not "80 percent of Microsoft employees have an iPod." Rather, it says that if I take just the Microsoft population that have portable music players (we are never told how big a percentage this is), then 80% of that population have iPods.

A Pew survey said that 11% of American adults have music players, with higher numbers for those aged 18-30 and lower for those 45 and up. So assuming Microsoft tends to have younger employees, maybe 20% own music players. 80% of that would be 16% of all Microsoft employees, not 80% of all Microsoft employees.

Get it?

The teachers at my kids' elementary school are afraid to ask questions about how to use a computer or what to do when they don't work right. And when they do talk, they simply repeat dogmatic statements from the "experts." But it's totally different when we talk about digital cameras, home stereos, TVs, cell phones, etc. Then they can explain exactly what each button does and how to use it.

I agree with Mace that for teens, it's a completely different story. Not only are they into cool, they expect their computers to just work too.

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Anonymous wrote:
Hey, WRONG! Do you understand how sentences are constructed? Guess not.

Who are you talking to? Peter Jennings?

Not sure where you are getting your numbers from. Apparently only from Steve-o and Apple. In reality, the iPod holds less than 3% marketshare in the music player market, with Creative holding nearly 45%, being the single largest producer. As for the online music side, Napster now controls nearly 90% of the online music, both purchase and subscription services.

Thanks to this dominance, MS (thanks to the use of their DRM) will more than likely drive Apple out of the music business within the year. This also means that the main support for keeping Apple up and running will be gone. So, kiss you pitiful excuse of a computer and OS goodbye.

BillG seems to be making the rounds - looks like he's desperately trying to get "mindshare" for Microsoft.

So can anyone explain what BillG is talking about in that quote on the electronic tablets?

And is there a Microsoft product coming soon that will allow us mere mortals to experience that progress-in-the-lab speech recognition?

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Anonymous wrote:
Not sure where you are getting your numbers from. Apparently only from Steve-o and Apple. In reality, the iPod holds less than 3% marketshare in the music player market, with Creative holding nearly 45%, being the single largest producer. As for the online music side, Napster now controls nearly 90% of the online music, both purchase and subscription services.

Thanks to this dominance, MS (thanks to the use of their DRM) will more than likely drive Apple out of the music business within the year. This also means that the main support for keeping Apple up and running will be gone. So, kiss you pitiful excuse of a computer and OS goodbye.

Tsk tsk. That's just lazy. At least RC has the work ethics to link to misleading articles to back up his posts. This is just...it's just not entertaining if you don't put in the effort, you know? It's like that one guy at the party that tells the joke wrong so the punchline doesn't make any sense. Spend some more time on it next time.

Small White Car:

To the Guest in the second comment who said the Guest in the first comment was "categorically wrong".

And well yeah to Peter Jennings, but he probably doesn't read MDN...

Bill Gates is always talking about "more choice", "more options".

More choice and more options come at a price. It generally means that the device with more choice and options may have many functions, but does none of them very well..... or is too complicated.

More choice "means cheaper prices"?? Yes, more choice does mean cheaper prices and it also means "cheap products" that are a waste of money and time.

Bill Gates may be a very rich man, who saw the opportunity of a life time by selling MS-DOS to IBM, but he clearly does not understand or refuses to acknowledge the paradigm shift in his own industry.

Maybe Mr. Gates should be more concerned about his "joke of an OS" and fix that before trying to take over the online music business or the gaming platform business or the smart watch business or the Google search engine business..... Bill "stay home" and clean up your mess.... I mean OS!!

Please reference reality, not your imagination...

I didn't see this part when it aired here (California).

MacObserver doesn't too happy about their thumb-exhausting player.

quote:
"Consumers want more choice than what Apple can offer and Microsoft will gain market share in digital media devices in 2005"

MacObserver doesn't sound too happy about their thumb-exhausting player.

quote:
"Consumers want more choice than what Apple can offer and Microsoft will gain market share in digital media devices in 2005"

Apple has sold about 200,000,000 songs. Napster has about 270,000 customers. They control 90% of the market, you said? At least Reality Check's good enough to make sure his lies aren't mathematically impossible.

Sounds like an Apple hater to me ...

Sounds more like an RC parody to me

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Anonymous wrote:
Sounds more like an RC parody to me

yourself.

In the original Wired article, the MS employee used as a source estimated that 80% of the employees had an MP3 player of some kind, and that 80% of them were iPods. Which translated into 64% of the 25,000 employees, or about 16,000.

Now, is that the result of a scientific survey? No. In fact, if the poll that indicates that 11% of Americans own some MP3 player is at all accurate, it really makes the numbers from Redmond look fishy. I would expect that based on age and demographics that they would have a higher rate than average, but 7 times average? Dunthinkso. But based on sales, I would expect a majority of them to be iPods.

But it is interesting as anectdotal evidence of the popularity of the iPod vs its competitors, and it would be interesting to find out if its true that the MS management sent out email saying "Stop buyin' them there dang iPods!"

I wish Peter Jennings had asked him that....

Billy Boy is losing it.

Good bye Microshit! Your days of glory are over and GOOD RIDDANCE!

I can see now that you are all breathing the same chemical. Just because Steve-o talks big does not mean his numbers are correct. In the real world, people who talk big numbers are all just trying to make a failure seem like something it is not. It's funny that people tend to reference online and print articles to show just how much Apple has done and sold, while those articles are themselves getting the numbers from Apple.

Get a clue, people. I'm not saying not to buy a Mac or use iTunes. Just that the iPod and iTunes are not nerely as big and popular as Steve-o is telling you it is.

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B-sabre wrote:
Now, is that the result of a scientific survey? No. In fact, if the poll that indicates that 11% of Americans own some MP3 player is at all accurate, it really makes the numbers from Redmond look fishy. I would expect that based on age and demographics that they would have a higher rate than average, but 7 times average? Dunthinkso. But based on sales, I would expect a majority of them to be iPods.

You've aparently not been on the NYC Subways. I'd say at least 1 in 6 people have a flash or hard disk based music player of some kind, be it iPod, Zen, Archos, or in my case, PDA. The majority are yes, iPods. However, in a technology company, the demographics are completely different. It's like comparing coffee intake between national and seattle. It just doesn't work.

Every damn year Gates comes out and says they've got speech recognition right. Every damn year he talks about digital convergence. Every damn year he talks about security. Every damn year he says tablets are poised to take off.

And every damn year they do nothing. Nothing. What has MicroSoft done of importance lately?

How much virgin blood did Creative have to give up to get Gates to keep mentioning their player? Talk about a deal with the devil.

I mean, the Zen is a decent player. I might even use one....if the iPod wasn't about 3 years ahead of it.

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Guest wrote:

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B-sabre wrote:
Now, is that the result of a scientific survey? No. In fact, if the poll that indicates that 11% of Americans own some MP3 player is at all accurate, it really makes the numbers from Redmond look fishy. I would expect that based on age and demographics that they would have a higher rate than average, but 7 times average? Dunthinkso. But based on sales, I would expect a majority of them to be iPods.

You've aparently not been on the NYC Subways. I'd say at least 1 in 6 people have a flash or hard disk based music player of some kind, be it iPod, Zen, Archos, or in my case, PDA. The majority are yes, iPods. However, in a technology company, the demographics are completely different. It's like comparing coffee intake between national and seattle. It just doesn't work.

That '1 in 6' number is about 15%, or not that high off the national average. And of course, since lowest penetration will be in the elderly and presumably retired, you're not seeing as many of them on the subway as you do people who are going out to work, shop, play, etc.

As for the source's 80% number, I still think that sounds really high - even at a company like Microsoft, not everybody is going to be a tech-head or gadget freak or have that much disposable income. What about the budgeting/financial people, marketing types, etc? Just because they are working at a tech firm does not automatically make them tech-heads or even computer literate.

Now, saying that, do I see extensive use of MP3 players by engineering/software types at a software company? yes, but engineers/software people are almost by definition gadgeteers, so I would expect a higher percentage than average having them. And at Microsoft, there should be a higher than normal percentage of engineer/software types than at, say, an insurance company.

But 80% ownership of an MP3 player says that just about everybody except the janitorial and cafeteria staff have one, and I don't really buy that. Even at Redmond.

Do I believe that a larger than average number of MS employees have an MP3 player, compared to the national average? Yes, based on the age, education and career demographics that is not much of a leap. Are most of them iPods? No reason to disbelieve it, based on sales, but we have no direct evidence. Do I, on reflection, believe that 80% of the people who work at MS have an MP3? No, that number is just too much higher than the national average to believe it without better information than an anectdotal report.

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B-sabre wrote:
Do I, on reflection, believe that 80% of the people who work at MS have an MP3? No.

Good, because that's not what the article said.

I mean, yeah, THIS article said it, but it's because they quoted it wrong in the interview that this article is about.

The ORIGINAL article said that 80% of MS employees THAT OWN MP3 players own iPods.

I don't know if that's true, either, but it's easily possible.

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Small White Car wrote:

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B-sabre wrote:
Do I, on reflection, believe that 80% of the people who work at MS have an MP3? No.

Good, because that's not what the article said.

I mean, yeah, THIS article said it, but it's because they quoted it wrong in the interview that this article is about.

The ORIGINAL article said that 80% of MS employees THAT OWN MP3 players own iPods.

I don't know if that's true, either, but it's easily possible.

...sigh... Actually, that is exactly what the original source in the Wired article said.

Quote

To the growing frustration and annoyance of Microsoft's management, Apple Computer's iPod is wildly popular among Microsoft's workers.

"About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering."

The source estimated 80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player -- that translates to 16,000 iPod users among the 25,000 who work at or near Microsoft's corporate campus. "This irks the management team no end," said the source.

I can't make it plainer than that - 80% of Microsoft employees have a "portable music player" and 80% of those are iPods. And I just don't buy that first number now. The second, maybe. But not the first.

Edit: I am assuming that by "portable music player" the source meant an MP3 player of some kind, and not a CD, tape or minidisc.

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B-sabre wrote:

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Small White Car wrote:

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B-sabre wrote:
Do I, on reflection, believe that 80% of the people who work at MS have an MP3? No.

Good, because that's not what the article said.

I mean, yeah, THIS article said it, but it's because they quoted it wrong in the interview that this article is about.

The ORIGINAL article said that 80% of MS employees THAT OWN MP3 players own iPods.

I don't know if that's true, either, but it's easily possible.

...sigh... Actually, that is exactly what the original source in the Wired article said.

Quote

To the growing frustration and annoyance of Microsoft's management, Apple Computer's iPod is wildly popular among Microsoft's workers.

"About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering."

The source estimated 80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player -- that translates to 16,000 iPod users among the 25,000 who work at or near Microsoft's corporate campus. "This irks the management team no end," said the source.

I can't make it plainer than that - 80% of Microsoft employees have a "portable music player" and 80% of those are iPods. And I just don't buy that first number now. The second, maybe. But not the first.

Edit: I am assuming that by "portable music player" the source meant an MP3 player of some kind, and not a CD, tape or minidisc.

When they say "80% of MS employees WHO USE portable music players own an iPod" they mean that if you take the group of MS employee people who actually own music players (that particular number of which we don't know), 80% of THAT GROUP own an iPod. That doesn't mean 80% of ALL MS employees use an iPod. Just 80% of the music player owners. That could be 20 people. That could be 2,000 people. That could be 4 people. Until they actually say, for example: "out of all 25,000 MS employees, 10,000 of them use music players" or whatever, then you could calculate that 8,000 (80% of 10,000) use an iPod. The percentage (80%) is to be used on the number of employees who own music players (which is not listed), not 80% of the entire group of MS employees. It says "of those who own music players" not "of all employees in the company."

Regardless, it's just funny that MS seems scared of a little thing called competition.

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Guest wrote:

When they say "80% of MS employees WHO USE portable music players own an iPod" they mean that if you take the group of MS employee people who actually own music players (that particular number of which we don't know), 80% of THAT GROUP own an iPod. That doesn't mean 80% of ALL MS employees use an iPod. Just 80% of the music player owners. That could be 20 people. That could be 2,000 people. That could be 4 people. Until they actually say, for example: "out of all 25,000 MS employees, 10,000 of them use music players" or whatever, then you could calculate that 8,000 (80% of 10,000) use an iPod. The percentage (80%) is to be used on the number of employees who own music players (which is not listed), not 80% of the entire group of MS employees. It says "of those who own music players" not "of all employees in the company."

Regardless, it's just funny that MS seems scared of a little thing called competition.

The necessary information is right there in the original Wired article:

25,000 people work for Microsoft at Redmond;

80% of those people own a "portable music player"

80% of the people who own a portable music player own an iPod.

25,000 x 80% x 80% = 25,000 x (0.8 x 0.8) = 25,000 x 0.64

25,000 x 0.64 = 16,000

Jennings, and numerous others screwed up in saying "80% of Microsoft employees own iPods." Billy is probably correct if he doesn't believe 80% own iPods. Its more like 64%. If you buy any of the 80% figures being tossed around.

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Guest wrote:
I can see now that you are all breathing the same chemical. Just because Steve-o talks big does not mean his numbers are correct. In the real world, people who talk big numbers are all just trying to make a failure seem like something it is not. It's funny that people tend to reference online and print articles to show just how much Apple has done and sold, while those articles are themselves getting the numbers from Apple.

Get a clue, people. I'm not saying not to buy a Mac or use iTunes. Just that the iPod and iTunes are not nerely as big and popular as Steve-o is telling you it is.

You do know that Apple gets their Marketshare numbers from NPD Techworld (iPod) and Nielsen Soundscan (iTMS), right???

Apple's not just pulling these numbers out of their a$$.

"In the real world, people who talk big numbers are all just trying to make a failure seem like something it is not."

Yes, just like the chump who said Napster had 90% of the online music market. You're really sore that Apple has the real majority of that market with no signs of losing it, aren't you? Apple truly does have 70%, whether you like it or not. Pretending they don't doesn't make it so.

And let me add, the integration of PCs and telephones will not be the next big breakthrough in technology. It wasn't the first time around, and it won't be now that Microsoft has stolen the idea. Telephone-via-internet software has been around for years now.

Pot, kettle, black?

Paragraph 3 of the excerpt of the Wired article B-sabre quoted: "80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player".

Paragraph 2 of the same excerpt: "About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod".

As I've illustrated with italics, those two quotes DO NOT say the same thing.

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mrhooks wrote:
Pot, kettle, black?

Paragraph 3 of the excerpt of the Wired article B-sabre quoted: "80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player".

Paragraph 2 of the same excerpt: "About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod".

As I've illustrated with italics, those two quotes DO NOT say the same thing.

The first citation ("About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod,") is a direct quote of a Microsoft "source" - his words, as spoken to the reporter. That's why they are in quotes.

The second citation (The source estimated 80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player ) is a paraphrasing of something the source also said to the reporter, and obviously refers back to the first quote from its placement and order in the story. The second cite gives context to the frist quote, illustrating the magnitude of the penetration by the iPod into MS.

He then follows up with a second quote ("This irks the management team no end,") showing that the two quotes and the paraphrase are all related and part of the same discussion. Why would he change topics midstream in a conversation between portable and "non-portable" music players? The paragraph structure and story narrative make it obvious that they refer to the same thing.

Maybe he had "portable" in that second cite at some time, but an editor took it out to make word-count, or because its too damn awkward to say "portable music player" yumpty-yump times in an article. You're splitting hairs if you keep trying to say that they are not related solely on the absence of the word "portable".

I'm done parsing the Wired article, unless you want to argue about what the meaning of the word "is" is....

Help me out here. Is the Anonymous posting a joke... or is the guys just an anit-Apple lunatic? As recent;y as November, Apple had 87% of the hard drive MP3 player market (down a bit from a peak of 92%) and 58% of the overall MP3 player market. These numbers are prior to the release of the Shuffle which is quickly grabbing market share at the low end of the market.

Microsoft zealots have been predicting the demise of Apple for a decade and a half now. And consistently Apple teaches them what innovation really means by creating entire new markets.

By the way, lest I be accused of being intellectually lazy, here's some support of my numbers:
http://www.extremeipod.com/article2/0,1759,1711754,00.asp

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Small White Car wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
Not sure where you are getting your numbers from. Apparently only from Steve-o and Apple. In reality, the iPod holds less than 3% marketshare in the music player market, with Creative holding nearly 45%, being the single largest producer. As for the online music side, Napster now controls nearly 90% of the online music, both purchase and subscription services.

Thanks to this dominance, MS (thanks to the use of their DRM) will more than likely drive Apple out of the music business within the year. This also means that the main support for keeping Apple up and running will be gone. So, kiss you pitiful excuse of a computer and OS goodbye.

Tsk tsk. That's just lazy. At least RC has the work ethics to link to misleading articles to back up his posts. This is just...it's just not entertaining if you don't put in the effort, you know? It's like that one guy at the party that tells the joke wrong so the punchline doesn't make any sense. Spend some more time on it next time.

It's funny that Uncle bill said that Speech recognition will be a major breakthrough in the future... since Apple is renovating is spoken interface in tiger and I read that it'll also be easier to "pilot" your mac just with your voice.

So, since Longhorn is so far out in the future you can barely see it, that means that Gates is already thinking about copying some of Tiger features in his "new" (?) Os...

Very very sad... One day perhaos we'll be witnesses of the fall of this dark empire.

80% x 80% = 64%. Jennings misquoted the article. Gates took advantage of the blunder. Wired is, of course, right.

He's certainly trying to do the same thing with WMA that he did with DOS, Windows and IE - dominate the world with cheap mediocrity; just as it killed off DR DOS, OS/2 and Netscape, Microsoft will try to use its desktop dominance to eliminate competitors (RealPlayer, QuickTime, iTunes, etc.) and lock people into WMP/WMA.

RealPlayer, for example, is already detected as spyware by Microsoft's new anti-spyware software.

(RealPlayer *is* spyware, of course, but not more so than WMP....)

MS will ultimately bundle a pretty good, though not great, player for free with a paid subscription service -- it will be tied to longhorn and everybody who uses it will sign up; at least most everybody. Free 20g player with your $5/month service; why not. Microsoft competes by offering for-free what other companies choose to charge for and thereby control markets. It is a sound business strategy; at least a sound big-business strategy--not one that can be executed by a small fledgling company. Microsoft's strategy is control-first, profit latter; through value added tools -- they give you free allen, philips, hex, star and square head screws with your cheap blade screw driver and then sell you--for big bucks--the drivers you really needed in the first place.

Apple on the other hand is entirely ego driven, Steve's to be precise. Mr Job's doesn't want to play second to anyone; even worse, doesn't want anybody to tell him he is not good-enough or that his ideas are pedestrian-at-best. Hence apple works very hard to make product's that are beyond the competence of others; even if they have to buy their ideas, e.g. itunes was once soundjam.

Remember folks, this is the guy who missed the INTERNET until it upped and hit him over the head, lol.

That anyone still thinks of Gates as a tech 'visionary' of any kind or believes he's an expert in anything beyond legal wrangling and squashing smaller companies through unfair business practices, is quite astounding.

And yes Bill, tons of your lil' MS worker bees DO in fact walk around happily with iPods all day. Get over it.

On the other hand, I got to see one of those little Zen mp3 players at a compusa, and they are nowhere near as ugly in person as they seem in pictures; it was actually <shudder> pretty cool </shudder>.

To Bookman: You're kiddin', right?

Looks-wise, Creative Zen players come off like somewhat cleaned-up versions of the Dull DJ. Not as bad, but its still like putting lipstick on a plain girl and calling her Pamela Anderson. iPods looks way better.

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Anonymous wrote:
To Bookman: You're kiddin', right?

Looks-wise, Creative Zen players come off like somewhat cleaned-up versions of the Dull DJ. Not as bad, but its still like putting lipstick on a plain girl and calling her Pamela Anderson. iPods looks way better.

But it is tiny - have you ever seen one in the wild? I would prefer a mini, but if somebody gave me one, I'd say thank you.