After seven and a half months, it is estimated by Microsoft that they have sold a million Zunes. Of course, that figure is very sketchy and unsupported. It is based upon an interview with Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division president, Robbie Bach, where he was misquoted as saying that they had sold “a little over a million Zunes” by the end of May, when he really said that they expected to have sold over a million Zunes by the end of June. Furthermore, nobody is sure that they have actually sold that many to consumers, as Microsoft has the tendency to report shipments to retailers as actual sales to inflate their figures. (And, as a side note, Bach has recently been implicated in an insider trading scandal.)

While the Zune’s release was rather uneventful (ten units sold at a San Francisco store was “better than expected”), the iPhone’s release was manic, crazed, crowded and furious. After ten days, it is reported that nearly a million iPhones have been sold; by the two-week mark, the number of one million is perfectly reasonable to expect.

Which means that Apple reached the one-million mark in just 1/16th the time it took for the Zune to do the same thing. Of course, look at the comparison between them:

True, one is $250 and the other is $500, but Apple has a much bigger profit margin, and more expensive stuff should be harder to sell, right? But really, just in terms of industrial design, there’s no comparison here. At right, you can see a side view of the iPhone. I was trying to get a similar image of the Zune to show a comparison (the iPhone is 0.46″ thick, the Zune 0.58″), but I could not find a single image on the web of a Zune in full side profile. I soon figured it out: it’s basically just a rectangle from that view. Oh, there’s the line of a seam breaking it up, but from the side, the Zune is utterly nondescript. Which explains why nobody posts images of it that way.

The Zune is set for an upgrade–but then again, according to reports, so is the iPhone. And while the Zune can get software upgrades like the iPhone (both may get their wireless capabilities upgraded), the iPhone is far more upgradeable without having to buy a new unit, as it relies on the touch screen for the full interface.

Of course, we’re comparing apples and oranges here a bit–the Zune is only a media player, and the iPhone is a media player, web browser, email/schedule/address book client, camera/photo viewer, and a telephone. But what happens when the first widescreen iPod comes out? It’s been rumored to happen sometime this year, possibly in August, but probably later. When you get a full-screen, multi-touch iPod with the 3.5-inch 480×320 display? People have gushed about the Zune’s “big” display, which is a 3-inch 320×240 screen–but that’s half the resolution of the iPhone at almost the same size. If the new iPod will have Bluetooth and WiFi like it’s cousin iPhone, then there won’t be much to give the Zune any advantage.

Seriously, I don’t know who is buying Zunes right now. If it were an independent company instead of a part of Microsoft, I don’t see it’s shares going up anytime soon. But then, I should add the disclaimer that I own a chunk of Apple stock, so I may be biased.