Apple today announced that they had sold a quarter billion (250m) songs from their iTunes music store. At a rate of 1.25m songs being sold daily, the store expects to be selling approx. half a billion songs annually.
Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, was announced his surprise at the scale of the figures, commenting today "when we launched the iTunes Music Store we were hoping to sell a million songs in the first six months - now we’re selling over a million songs every day, and we’ve sold over a quarter billion songs in total."
The iTunes store, soon to be two years old, has proved incredibly successful for Apple. It has expanded into fifteen countries and enjoys 70% of the global music market. Apple have recently announced plans to launch a Japanese version of the store in March. In other Apple news, rumours are rife of a new generation of iPod Mini that will be announced shortly; the device features a five gigabyte hard drive from Seagate. ThinkSecret are also reporting that a massive 80gig 5th generation iPod with a new shell could be in the works with an eye towards a summer launch.
View: iTunes | Apple Homepage
Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, was announced his surprise at the scale of the figures, commenting today "when we launched the iTunes Music Store we were hoping to sell a million songs in the first six months - now we’re selling over a million songs every day, and we’ve sold over a quarter billion songs in total."
The iTunes store, soon to be two years old, has proved incredibly successful for Apple. It has expanded into fifteen countries and enjoys 70% of the global music market. Apple have recently announced plans to launch a Japanese version of the store in March. In other Apple news, rumours are rife of a new generation of iPod Mini that will be announced shortly; the device features a five gigabyte hard drive from Seagate. ThinkSecret are also reporting that a massive 80gig 5th generation iPod with a new shell could be in the works with an eye towards a summer launch.
View: iTunes | Apple Homepage
Cont...
As a result, the publisher is expecting record results in the current quarter, which runs through to the end of its financial year on March 31st, and includes the launch of titles including Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and key new brands Brothers In Arms and Cold Theory.
Ubisoft is projecting fourth quarter earnings of 220 million Euro, which will leave its overall sales for the year up by ten per cent - a reversal of the first nine months of the year, which have seen sales down by 11 per cent.
The company, whose future has been the target of intense speculation after Electronic Arts acquired a 20 per cent shareholding in late December, is also targeting growth of at least 12 per cent in 2005/06, which would bring sales to over 600 million Euro.
"Ubisoft is well on its way to meeting its fiscal-year objectives," according to CEO Yves Guillemot, "and can count on an excellent year in 2005/06. This proves that our unique assets, brands and studios, are generating significant growth and profitability."
Last edited by 9969 on 24 Jan 2005 - 18:19
And I guess you have never heard of this concept called a backup?
itms isn't the cheapest, or best sounding online music distributer.
itms means i have to buy an overpriced, under specced pertable player to make use of the songs i download, and don't get me on the itunes software itself, horrible.
and that comes from an ex-ipod user. I'd rather buy the cd and rip it myself, at least i can use a decent open source format, such as vorbis, and not have to worry about making sure i have an ipod for ever.
ultimately itunes means you're in apples pockets, forever. have a nice day.
If you lose your iTunes files, Apple knows you bought them, so you can download them again for free.
So buying music online is actually MORE secure than buying a CD.
Besides, once you buy an album off iTunes, you can burn a CD (Or several CDs), so then you have the security of an iTunes license that lets you re-download if you lose it, AND you have multiple physical CDs with copies of the songs.
Oh, and you pay about a third less to get them online to boot.
I personally would buy from a download service as i would much rather buy the cd which you can find for the same price online so still not cheap enough for my liking!
If they were getting out of the computer business, why would they bother releasing the Mac mini, iLife 05 and iWork?
Look at their product lines. They are mostly computer/server related. Yeah, they are exiting the computer sector.
For one thing, it's no longer "iPod, from the people who brought you iMac", it is now "iMac, from the people who brought you iPod". That simple change in advertising speaks volumes about Apple's shift from computers to music as their primary push.
Apple's music-related business is now more important to them than their computer business. In the computer industry, they're a minor player with little relevance. In the music business however, they are a dominant force, with a majority marketshare in both hard-drive based MP3 players and online music sales. They also make the most popular MP3 player of any kind, let alone HDD based ones.
Im still stuck on a 3g iPod... definitely will upgrade for the battery life alone.. though color screen will be a bonus
I hope they keep the white though.. if they go the aluminium look they should start calling them powerPods.
and a g5 ipod? Damn it, I just got my g4 at christmas.. ah well, a colour screen and album artwork would be really nice (like galley said)
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