by Playfuls Staff |
9th April 2007
The successful iPod, Apple's biggest profit maker, has
reached a new milestone as the company announced that the 100 millionth iPod
has been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history.
[more]
The first generation of iPods was released on Oct. 23, 2001,
and they pretty much saved Apple from a financial downhill. Apple, thanks to
the iPod-iTunes end-to-end now controls 70 percent of the portable digital
audio player market and, in the US,
88 percent of sales of downloadable music.
“At this historic milestone, we want
to thank music lovers everywhere for making iPod such an incredible success,”
said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPod has helped millions of people around the
world rekindle their passion for music, and we’re thrilled to be a part of
that.”
Why did Apple jet at the top of the digital player's market?
It's design made fashion and, on second place, the iTunes-iPod exclusive link.
Few people know the fact that iPod’s success is more
indebted to Jonathan Ive, the “master of puppets” at Apple’s design department,
than to Steve Jobs. Following his outstanding achievement at the
Cupertino-based company, the Queen of England granted him a noblesse title and
he even managed to become the most influential British person a couple of
years ago, beating Harry Potter’s creator, J.K. Rowling.
Las year the company said that it shipped 8.7 million iPods
during its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended Sept. 30 2006. In fact, Apple's
$1.6 billion from iPod sales in the quarter was more than it generated as an
entire company back in October 2001. Some even think that the success of its
iPod music player is helping it to win converts in the PC market.
iTunes Store was launched initially to promote iPod player,
but in three years Apple has managed to transform into the biggest online music
download service. In February 2006, Apple has celebrated the 1 billionth
download from iTunes.
Today, Apple announced that 2.5 billion songs, 50 million
television episodes and over 1.3 million feature-length films have been
purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store, making it the world's most
popular online music, TV and movie store.
According to Nielsen NetRatings, a provider of Internet
media and market research, traffic to Apple's iTunes Web site and use of the
iTunes application has spectacularly increased in the last two years, reaching
nearly 14 percent of the active Internet population.
