Deathwatch: GameStop Dumps the Zune Because Nobody Wants It

Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

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The Zune Social may be winding down. One big retailer, GameStop, has decided to stop selling Microsoft’s digital music players because of a lack of demand. From TheStreet.com:

“We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” said a GameStop spokesperson. “It (also) did not fit with our product mix.”

Why is this not a surprise? Microsoft has sold only 2 million Zune’s since it launched the device in November, 2006. Apple, in contrast, sold 10.6 million iPods last quarter.

GameStop will try to sell the rest of its Zune inventory online. And if that doesn’t work, it can always go the Atari route and lay them to rest in a landfill.

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