by Playfuls Staff |
11th April 2007
Recently, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company that gave the world the Mac and its famous “1984” commercial announced that it sold more than 100 million iPods.[more]
Enjoying a comfortable lead in the digital music market, Apple announced that since November 2001, when the first edition of the company’s revolutionary MP3 player was launched, it sold more than 100 million units, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history.
Since its debut, the iPod has undergone a series of changes and improvements meant at strengthening even more its undisputed dominance in the digital music business. Apple released more than 10 new models of iPod in the five and a half years of existence for the craved gadget, including two revised editions of iPod mini, two generations of iPod nano and two generations of iPod shuffle. The iTunes-iPod duopoly has ensured Apple a tight grip on the digital music market, allowing the company to dictate the price for the downloaded songs during the negotiations with record companies.
“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.”
“It’s hard to remember what I did before the iPod,” said Mary J. Blige, GRAMMY Award-winning singer. “iPod is more than just a music player, it’s an extension of your personality and a great way to take your favorite music with you everywhere you go.”
“Without the iPod, the digital music age would have been defined by files and folders instead of songs and albums,” said John Mayer, GRAMMY Award-winning singer-songwriter and guitarist. “Though the medium of music has changed, the iPod experience has kept the spirit of what it means to be a music lover alive."
The iPod not only revolutionized the way we listen to music, it also determined the development of the profitable accessories-industry that was built around it. Even Apple’s most powerful enemies on the MP3-players market have started building accessories for the iPod, and now more than 4,000 accessories designed for the latter are currently on sale, while more than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles currently offer iPod connectivity.
“I take my running shoes and my iPod with me everywhere,” said Lance Armstrong, seven-time Tour de France champion. “I listen to music when I run. Having my music with me is really motivating.”
The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog with over five million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The iTunes Store has sold over 2.5 billion songs since its debut, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies.
According to Gartner Inc., the mobile music market will grow strongly through 2010, to more than five times its size at the end of 2005, and reach $32 billion. Mobile operators stand to gain a lot, but face many hurdles in the race to be the main winners in this market.
Apple had 82.7 percent market share for the hard-drive iPods in the first half of December 2006, but down from the 86.8 percent registered the previous year. Considering both hard-drive and flash-based MP3 players, Apple holds an impressive 62.2 percent market share for its gadget, almost the same percent as in 2005 (63%).
Overall, SanDisk was No. 2 in December 2006 with 18.4 percent of the overall market, up from 17.5 percent last year.
As a comparison, Microsoft’s “iPod killer” called Zune managed to obtain 9% market share in the first week since its launch in November, making it the second most important MP3 player, but far behind iPod. Zune’s success is diminished though when we consider that it took 9% of the hard drive MP3 player market. These numbers also do not include sales from Apple retail stores, which sell only iPod players.
Despite the negative reviews for Zune and the lagging sales, Microsoft is confident that it will meet its goal of having about 1 million Zune owners by the end of June 2007.
