Sweet e-motion
The well documented teething problems of Microsoft's controller-less, motion-sensing peripheral for the Xbox 360 don't seems to have done anything to dampen demand. Microsoft has announced that in the first 25 days of it being available, 2.5 million have been sold - that's 100,000 per day, maintaining its fast start.
To put that into context, the previous fastest selling new category was the Apple iPad, which started off at around a million units per month and, in turn, surpassed the DVD. As readwriteweb points out, the current rate is pretty much double that of the iPad, while the average selling price is less than half. It must be noted that these figures do include the recent Black Friday frenzy.
"We are thrilled about the consumer response to Kinect, and are working hard with our retail and manufacturing partners to expedite production and shipments of Kinect to restock shelves as fast as possible to keep up with demand," said Don Mattrick, president of the interactive entertainment business at Microsoft. "With sales already exceeding two and a half million units in just 25 days, we are on pace to reach our forecast of 5 million units sold to consumers this holiday."
"Kinect on Xbox 360 was a top performer at Target this weekend," said Nik Nayar, VP of merchandising at Target, as US retailer. "We expect Kinect will be a must-have gift this holiday season, so Target will continue to receive consistent shipments of Kinect throughout December."
With Windows Phone 7 also being well received, although we're unaware of any published sales figures, Microsoft is doing a good job of diversifying away from PCs just as the market is in the process of doing. Whether these successes will be enough to ultimately fend off the likes of Apple and Google remains to be seen.
