Microsoft's Zune bizdev head counter-challenges my offer to shave my head

Yesterday, via e-mail, Zunecorps blogger Charlie Curran sent me an e-mail saying that Microsoft's head of business development for Zune Bill Wittress had a counter-offer to my open challenge to Microsoft president Robbie Bach to shave my head if Microsoft is ranked #2 in personal digital media player (PDMP) units sold after the holiday market share numbers are in.  According to a Bloomberg story, Bach said that's where Microsoft would be by the time the holidays are over.  To get to #2, Microsoft which is currently ranked 4th with 3 percent share will have to overtake #3 Creative with 4 percent share and #2 Sandisk with 10 percent share.  I wish Microsoft all the luck in the world. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math and see how, for Microsoft to come from behind like that in less than three months, is pretty much an impossible dream.  How impossible? I'm willing to stake my hair on it so long as Robbie is willing to do the same.

Bach, who hasn't yet accepted, clearly knows about the challenge by now since Bill Wittress whose blog is called ZuneGuy has responded instead.  Wrote Wittress:

I doubt if they'll get any response from the team since this is really comparing apples (pardon the pun) to oranges. The problem is that we don't compete (or compete very little) in the same pricepoints. SanDisk mainly concentrates on the sub $100 pricepoint where the volumes are much higher. Whereas we'll compete at the $149+ pricepoints.

Apples and Oranges?  Sounds like a backpedaling redirection to me.  Actually, I agree 100 percent. It's because Microsoft is primarily selling apples and Sandisk is primarily selling oranges when it comes to PDMPs that Microsoft won't make it to #2 by the time the holidays are over. But I'm not the one who said that Microsoft would be in the #2 position come January.  Robbie Bach is (or at least that's the story Bloomberg has).  So, all I'm doing is asking Bach to back up what he said in the Bloomberg story. Is that too much to ask?  Based on what Wittress is saying, it appears as though Microsoft isn't disputing my logic.  Wittress continues:

My [counter-]proposal is to compare sales from [Sandisk's] Sansa Connect to the Flash Zunes. Since the Connect has been out some time and has a head start, we just flat out compare our Flash line (4 and 8) with theirs...... I already shave my head. So [shaving my head] won't work. But, I look pretty silly when I grow my hair out. So, I'll grow my hair out for 6 weeks and post a photo on my blog if I lose. If I win, they shave their heads and post a photo. Any takers?

It sounds like one of those waterfront property in Arizona offers if you ask me.  Here I am offering to let Microsoft publicly shave my head on the stage of its choice -- something it will take far more than 6 weeks to recover from -- and there is also Sandisk's PR counsel Carm Lyman who agreed to do the same thing and she has WAY more to lose than I do (it would take her years to recover), and Wittress comes back with an offer to GROW his hair for 6 weeks and post a photo on his blog.  Forget what the bet is.  The offer isn't even in the same league.

Second, the Sansa Connect is Sandisk's $149 flash-based offering that, like Microsoft's Zunes, has a WiFi sharing feature.  Given that almost all of Sandisk's PDMP sales are not of the Sansa Connect, overtaking the Sansa Connect in the market isn't nearly as unattainable a goal as becoming the overall #2 marketshare holder in PDMP sales. Had that been Robbie Bach's stated goal, you would have never seen me betting my hair that he was wrong.

I responded to Zunecorps Charlie Curran via email and told him he was free to print my response (it appears here).  Here's part of what I said:

Microsoft didn't say it was going to overtake the Sansa Connect. Robbie Bach went on record as saying that Apple would be #1 and Microsoft would be #2 when the holiday numbers are in. That is an outrageously more ambitious and less achievable goal than simply beating the Sansa Connect in the market. In fact, so ambitious that not only am I willing to make my own counter-prediction, I'm willing to stake my hair on it. If the president of a technology company publicly makes a definitive market prediction like the one Robbie Bach did, then he shouldn't he be willing to stand behind it? Shouldn't he be able to show  the math or the rationale to back it up?

So far, that is what I've done.  I'm standing behind my prediction and I'm willing to stake my hair on it (and apparently, so is Sandisk's Carm Lyman).  And just for the record, no one came to me with this idea for a story.  When I saw the original story in Bloomberg, I thought it was odd how Bloomberg talked about Bach's stated goal and how Apple was #1 and Microsoft was #4, but didn't say who #2 and #3 was or what their respective shares of the market were. When I Googled it and found out, I thought "Now that's a good story worth telling."