Demand high for iPod Shuffle on Black Friday

So, it was Black Friday last week, America's big post-Thanksgiving national day of shopping, and always a good indicator on what the big sellers will be in the US Christmas market this year. And yet another good Black Friday for Apple, with stats coming in suggesting that the new mini iPod Shuffle was the big seller in terms of digital music devices. The new economy-line iPod reportedly outperformed Apple's more expensive video-enabled iPod but, perhaps more importantly, also Microsoft's much hyped new Zune player. Many big stores had sold out of the Shuffles before the weekend kicked in proper, though Apple stores seemingly expected the high demand and had large quantities of the players in stock. Does this mean the Zune player is going to be the latest "iPod killer" that fails to even make a flesh wound on Apple? Well, while Apple is still clearly the dominant player, those who know about these things say it is still too soon to make any definite predictions regarding Microsoft's short term prospects in this space. And who am I to be making predictions if the experts won't? Though I will go as far as to say "bumpy ride ahead".