Reporter's Notebook: In Search of Zune

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK With all the hype surrounding the launch of Microsoft's Zune music player, I set out Tuesday afternoon to see if sales of the product were matching those lofty expectations. From the look of things, that hype may be exceeding reality for the time being.

For the purposes of this article, I visited four major retailers -- Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Wal-Mart -- all in the Reading, PA area, a city about 65 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia. While this suburb is a good ways away from the "megalopolis," it is by no means small town America.

My results were notably mixed, ranging from one store still assembling the Zune display and not having any out on racks to sell, to another which said sales had been surprisingly brisk.

First on the itinerary was Target, where I was greeted upon entrance to the electronics section by a nice Zune promotional display. However, the working model that is supposed to allow consumers to test out the device was inoperable, and upon attempting to turn it on I was greeted with an icon that I'm guessing meant the battery had no charge.

So much for that.

Regardless, I found the boxed Zunes -- 11 of them -- stuck in the security case right next to the iPods. It had looked like one white had sold so far. My timing was impeccable; seconds later a young woman came up the aisle and asked the salesman, "do you have any Zunes?"

The salesmen said yes, and begun to answer her questions, ranging from what he had heard about the device to whether or not she could import her CDs onto it. He obliged and told her what she wanted to know, adding if she were a fan of the iPod, she'd probably equate the player with blasphemy.

"I'm not one of them," she quipped. "I'm no fan of the iPod." With that, she asked for the brown model, and went on her way. Chalk up one sale for the Anything-but-iPod crowd.

My next stop was Best Buy, where the story was markedly different. Walking in, I found no indication that the Zune was even there, although I would find them displayed next to the other MP3 players in the wireless phone section.

Again, I was treated to another Zune sale (yes, another brown one) by a twenty-something young woman with her friend. She even bought a nice leather case. Good to see the accessory market is already alive and well.

Upon finishing with the customer, the employee came over and we proceeded to discuss how things were going with the Zune launch, at least from his perspective. "Actually surprisingly well," he responded. "We've sold at least 10 to 15 of them since I've been here."

When asked what colors were selling best, with a chuckle he said, "Believe it or not, the brown is flying off the shelves. All but a few of them have been that color." Also a hot seller? Black. Not so hot was white. He didn't know of any white Zunes that had sold all day.

I then proceeded to ask for a demonstration of the vaunted wireless capabilities of the Zune, which to my surprise, the salesperson did not know. He said several employees had spent several hours trying to figure out how to do it.

My attempts were to no avail as well. We could not figure out how to share songs even after 20 minutes of going through the menus and trying every single option. So much for the Zune's biggest feature working easily out of the box.

Just up the street was Circuit City, where I was shocked to find the Zune promotional display still in pieces, complete with a Microsoft employee apparently struggling to put it together. Nowhere to be found were the Zunes for sale, not even in the case along with the other MP3 players.

After several exasperated calls to his boss, the young man said that a cord was missing from the display, and that some item would "not be available until after Thanksgiving." Maybe this is what caused the other Zune display to be non-functional? One can only guess.

Unfortunately, unlike the trips to the first three retailers, my excursion to Wal-Mart was far less eventful. In fact, of all the retailers, even finding the music player was the hardest of all. I initially thought the player was not in stock, as every music player from the Sansa to the Zen to the iPod was displayed.

After some searching, however, I finally found them, somewhat hidden in the case. Wal-Mart was only stocking the black Zune, and it appeared as if they hadn't even been moved -- they were still stacked nicely in their spot. Not even Wal-Mart's promise of low prices had apparently opened the pocketbooks of the retailer's thrifty patrons.

While sales here in Reading, PA may not be exactly representative of the nation at large, it appears that the Zune is off to a slow, if not rocky start. But the biggest surprise of all may just be that when it comes to Zune fans, brown is indeed the new black.