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Our survey is now complete. We asked retailers around the world, although primarily focused on the U.S. since the Zune is not available in most overseas markets, which MP3 players were selling best, if they sold the Zune and which one they personally recommended.The final results are as follows. 81% of respondents told us they reccomended an iPod with the 30GB or 60GB model most commonly suggested. This differs from our earlier survey suggesting that the iPod Nano and Shuffle would be the hottest iPod models. 11% of survey respondents suggested the Creative Micro Zen MP3 player, primarily because functionality was close to the iPod and Zune and was cheaper to buy. Finally, Zune was recommended by only 7% of our respondents.

Our goal at Channel Checkers is to be the source for primary channel data. We leave the analysis to you the reader. Our two preview posts on this survey led to quite a bit of traffic and comments suggesting we are biased in our surveys. We are not dedicated Zune or iPod fans. We are fans of good solid original data that readers can use to draw useful conclusions.

Now to the rest of the survey. On the question of was the Zune selling well or not we got more positive feedback from the channel. 40% of respondents who carried the Zune said that the product was selling well. In many of these cases the respondents clarified that Zune did not sell in as much volume as iPod’s but that meaningful unit sales were occuring for the Zune. At Best Buy’s specifically, 50% of respondents said that the Zune was selling well while 50% said it was not selling well. One Best Buy respondent told us “Yes {we’ve sold alot of Zune’s}, it was also Black Friday so {we} sold alot of electronics products”

iPod’s were recommended for many reasons including flat out better product, iTunes, more accessories, been around longer, etc. When other brands were mentioned price was the most often cited reason for a customer being steered to a non-Apple MP3 player. Creative, Sandisk, Transcend were all recommended as cheaper alternatives. our survey left us wondering - What ever happened to iRiver? The once number 3 MP3 player manufactured has not been mentioned by any respondent in any survey on MP3 players all year.

Our survey results are not a big surprise although we might have expected the Zune to perform a little bit better. It does seem as though Best Buy is selling decent volumes of Zune’s but that other major retailers like Circuit City may be moving far fewer for some reason. It is clear that iPod dominates mind share among those who sell electronics to the public and whether or not one believes that the iPod is the best MP3 player device it will clearly be the most recommended for the forseeable future.

We are working on our follow-up survey on iPod sales versus the new Microsoft Zune MP3 player. Our first survey revealed a strong preference for the iPod despite the buzz around the Zune. Now the zune has launched we are working on seeing what consumer preferences are as the Christmas shopping season gets underway.Our survey questions were the following:

Which MP3 player do you recommend?

Do you sell the Microsoft Zune?

How well is it selling?

Our survey is not complete but the early results are interestng. First, iPod remains the dominant MP3 player, recommended by 70% of our respondents. The Zune was recommended by some who cited its Wi-fi connectivity as an attractive feature. The Zune and iPod 30GB players are priced similarly so price does not seem to offer an advantage to either competitor at the 30GB density.
What is interesting at this stage is that almost 50% of our survey respondents, even those recommending the iPod as the best MP3 player cited price as a negative for the iPod as indicated there were other brands that offered enough functionality to make the lower price worthwhile for a customer. The Creative Zen was recommended as one of the options for a lower priced player, as was the Sandisk Sansa and the Transcend. One respondent from a major U.S. Electronics chain said the Transcend MP3 player was selling the best among the lower priced MP3 players.

Our survey is not complete and we do capture a significant number of international responses where the Zune is not yet shipping. In India our retailer respondents suggested that March 2007 is a target date for the launch in that country. Most retailers reported selling Zune’s but fewer than the number of iPod’s sold.

We will work to complete our survey in the next few days but the early tabulations look like big unit shipments for Apple again as the Christmas selling season progresses.

Looks like BlackFriars is asking the same question and getting similar results. We see this is not much of a surprise however if you factor in the reach of the Ipod, worldwide, it could be a great Q4 for AAPL.BlackFriars is also predicting that the Ipod sells 20 Million units, now that would truly make any company’s quarter.

I find it interesting that the PS3 and Wii is not getting as more percentage of possible purchases. If you think that an Ipod retails for between $149-$249 and a Wii reatails for $250 they are in the same price point, people want music!  This actually probably speaks to the broad demographic that the Ipod hits upon, my mom wants an Ipod but not a Wii.
Just some thoughts as we go into the Holiday Shopping season.

We have completed our first survey on the satellite radio competitors. Sirius looks like the winner although we must note that we did include responses from Radio Shack, which only sells Sirius and not XM. Sirius was recommended by 60% of our respondents while XM was favored by 30%. 10% of respondents said either service was fine or the two services were equal.Our survey questions were the following:

Which satellite radio service should I get - XM Satellite or Sirius Satellite?

Which service is selling better?Are there hot deals or discounts associated with either service?

After scrubbing the data it looks like the Radio Shack effect, did not drive a large discepenancy in our data because amazingly at 10% of the Radio Shack’s we called actually recommended XM!!! This despite the fact that they sell only Sirius service and receivers. These Radio shack employees must be personal users of XM outside their day to day duties of promoting Sirius.
Another revealing trend we saw in our research that multiple survey participants reported that while Sirius still seems to be selling better in terms of total number the difference between the two services has narrowed substantially. These respondents reported that at this time last year Sirius dominated new subscriber activations but that this year the tallies run much closer to 50-50. This reporting was consistent across the survey that the two services are close to even in consumer preference.
Sirius was generally deemed better because of popular content like Howard Stern, NASCAR and the NFL. XM content was favored by those who said it has more music selections and content and in Montreal offers more French stations which made it the preference there. All in all it looks like Sirius should outpace XM in terms of new subscriber additions this year in 4Q. We’ll re-visit this survey in December and see how our precition is playing out.

We have conducted a survey on electronics retailers expectations for the hottest selling items for the Christmas selling season this year.We called major electronics retailers in North America and Western Europe. The question we asked was simple: “What do you expect to be the best selling item this Christmas selling season?”

The iPod was mentioned by 29% of the respondents in our survey. Our results surprised us somewhat as the iPod was mentioned most often and the new Ipod Nano specifically mentioned most often.

After the iPod, Sony’s Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii were cited as the next most often mentioned item. These games platforms were cited as the expected best seller by 20% of survey repondents. Microsoft X-Box was also mentioned by 15% of our survey respondents. The enthusiasm for the Wii and the Sony PS3 is high and sell-outs are expected for both game platforms by almost everyone we talked with.

HDTV’s, laptops, GPS units, and digital cameras were also mentioned but by far fewer respondents.

Looks like another strong Christmas for Apple and iPod. We had expected to hear strong demand for the new game platforms but the iPod trumped all these and remains the “it” device as far as the retailers are concerned this Christmas season.

Our survey on PC demand and the impacts of the pending Microsoft launch of its new operating system - Vista, is almost complete.We are calling major electronic retailers in Europe and North America. We asked the following questions:

Should we buy a Desktop or Laptop?

Should we wait to purchase a new computer until Vista comes out?

The results thus far are interesting. Almost unamiously the survey respondents recommended laptops. Desktops were only recommended as a cheaper alternative or for those interested in high end video gaming. A few respondents pushed Macs, but most suggested standard laptops from the usual manufacturers.

On the subject of waiting until Vista is launched we got some interesting data. First EVERY respondent said “No” to waiting and suggested a purchase now. Most reponsdents claimed that buying a computer that meets the system requirements for Vista is sufficient as Vista can be added later when it is released for general availability. This release date was estimated as 2-6 months by the retailers we contacted.

The most interesting data point we found was that Best Buy is offering a free Vista upgrade coupon with the purchase of a laptop or desktop.

This is interesting to us because it makes us ask, who is paying for this coupon? Is Microsoft offering it in conjunction with the PC manufactrers to protect Q4 demand from consumers who might wait for the Vista launch. Do the PC manufacturers pay for this? Best Buy?

It looks like a margin killer to us, although the rate of redemption could be small, offsetting the hit. We will follow this Best Buy free Vista upgrade offer and see if it is adopted by other retailers in coming weeks, or maybe already has but our data from these other major electronics retailers did not reveal this to be the case.

Well, we see that the Motorola RAZR, in multiple colors and the Motorola KRZR are now available on the Sprint Web Site. We had targeted November 3 (last Friday) and cannot claim complete victory since we did not check the site on the 3rd. At any rate, we feel pretty good about this prediction and expect to see the Motorola SLVR on the Sprint site some time this week.

Motorola’s impact on sales of Sany and Samsung phones will be of some interest post the launch of the Motorola phones and we will channel check this topic in a few weeks.