Since the launch of the Zune less than a month ago, I’ve been curious to see how Microsoft’s new mp3 player compares against the iPod.
A chart of search volume for ‘ipod’ and ‘zune’ shows that the share of searches for ‘ipod’ was 3X greater than the share of searches for ‘zune’ for the week ending 12/9/06. Not bad for a product that’s only been on shelves for three weeks.

But how are people searching for ‘zune’ versus ‘ipod’ and what does that tell us? The Hitwise Search Term Suggestion report for the two products shows an enormous delta in related terms – there were over 9,062 search terms captured by Hitwise containing ‘ipod’ in the last 4 weeks, compared to 666 for ‘zune.’ Certainly, iPod has several years behind it, and a complete line of products and accessories. However, three of the top 10 search terms containing ‘zune’ are looking for reviews or iPod comparisons, which would be expected for a new product.

The sites that people go to after conducting a search give another indication of consumer mindset (i.e., John Battelle’s Database of Intentions). Search term analysis for ‘zune’ shows that people are more likely to be looking for information on the Zune than going to a retail site to purchase it, with only three retailers in the list of top 10 terms receiving traffic from ‘zune.’ In contrast, nine of the top 10 sites receiving traffic from ‘ipod’ were retail sites. Another unique Hitwise feature that can be used to determine the interest in a product is the ability to chart a term’s share of searches in terms of visits sent to sites within a specific category. Charting the share of searches that ‘ipod’ and ‘zune’ sent to the Shopping & Classifieds category revealed that last week ‘ipod’ sent 10X more visits to Shopping & Classifieds category than ‘zune’ – certainly not as positive as our 3X number above.

The search term data show us that if it is possible to unseat a product with such a dominant market share as the iPod, it will be a long slow road. People are slowly checking out the Zune, reading reviews, and seeing what other people think before they make the leap. Its social networking features will need a signficant amount of time to gain hold. After all, it took MySpace over a year to rise to dominance, not just one month.
Another metric worth looking at is Demographics. By examining the demographics of the iTunes website versus Zune.net is our best indication of who us already using the iPod versus who is considering purchasing a Zune. The first thing that pops out is that visitors to the iTunes site are more likely to be female, while visitors to Zune.net are more likely to be male. Not surprising, as males are typically early adopters. The difference in age groups shows that iTunes users are strongest in the 25-44 age groups, while Zune.net is attracting more 18-24 year olds and 45-54 year olds. It makes sense that young males would be checking out the Zune, but what about 45-54 year olds? Are they older geeks (early adopters too), or parents of teens?

While Zune has generated a good deal of interest, it’s not going to unseat the iPod this holiday season. After the Christmas, we will be able to look at the software registration and download sites as we did last year to see how the iPod fared against the Zune.