Did Apple drop the price of the 32GB iPod touch to compete with the Zune HD?

Cleve Nettles
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September 15, 2009
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The ZuneHD came out today.  Have you heard of it?  It gets pretty good reviews and it costs less than a 32GB iPod touch...well, it did. 

Microsoft priced the Zune at $289 to undercut Apple's iPod Touch 32GB $299 price point.  However, today the price of a 32GB iPod touch has dropped to $279 at Amazon (something that almost never happens on a brand new model of ANYTHING from Apple).   Strangely, the 64GB model, which doesn't have a ZuneHD equivalent remains unchanged while the 8GB model is $10 off.

Microsoft...do we hear $269?  Going once...going twice

The iPod touch, of course, is still beating the Zune in the Amazon top 10 (below) but not by much.

Comments (10)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 4:48pm

Competition is good for consumers. It is about f-ing time

Mobius (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 5:25pm

I was just at a Best Buy earlier to check out the new Zune HD. And to say the least, I was not impressed. The displayed color was really dull and had a dark tint to it. The whites weren't white, but more grayish. And it looked pixelated...cuz it has a lower resolution screen than the iPod touch, albeit the smaller screen. And yes, the screen is noticeably smaller than the iPod Touch. The Zune's screen looks too narrow, so if you were to view webpages with the virtual landscape keyboard on-screen, the keyboard is pretty much taking the entire screen space.

Besides the Zune's built-in HD radio tuner and Tegra processor, I don't see any advantage of the Zune over the Touch. The Touch has a bigger screen for playing games and looking at webpages, and the new 3rd gen Touches should be comparable to the Tegra as the new Touches is twice as fast as the 2nd gen Touch.

LonePlacebo (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 5:35pm

You save two pennies when you buy a Zune HD from Amazon. LOL

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 5:36pm

Actually it seems pretty common that Apple products sell at a small discount on Amazon. Here are a few examples.

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (discounted on day of release)
http://bit.ly/195BHP

MacBook Pro 15"
http://bit.ly/FSu66

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 6:11pm

hope so ;d

iStevo (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 6:45pm

I guess now we know the real reason why Apple made a last minute decision to remove the video camera, this way they can have enough margin to undercut the Zune HD in price and still keep the differential of being a better mobile game console. The Zune HD does not have a video camera, so that was a feature Apple could remove (not launch) without loosing ground to the Zune.

After Christmas, when the cost of components comes down a bit and the Zune HD does not take off, Apple will add the video camera for free, giving the iPod touch an additional boost and sending the Zune HD to its misery.

It seems not even Microsoft is betting on the Zune HD as a viable platform, with a strategy of a closed App store.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 7:52pm

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/zune-marketplace

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 15, 2009 - 10:51pm

A "Zune" COMPETE with an "iPod" ? What next ? Raining gorillas ?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 16, 2009 - 10:34am

it was announced ages ago that the zune had radio. next thing apple put a radio on the nano. i'd say thats competing

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 16, 2009 - 11:12am

If that were true, Apple's would have put the radio in the Touch, not the Nano.

The only reasons I can think that Apple put a radio in the Nano, is that either it came "free" with the chip, or they were selling enough of the external radio adapters that they felt there was a market for it.

I'd guess the former.