Jobs: 1.5bn downloads on iTunes
Although this figure came out weeks ago during Apple’s Showtime event, I’d like to mention this, because it reinforces the prediction made in the iTunes sales statistics page, that 2 billion downloads will be reached by February 2007. As you can see from the graph on that page, the 1.5bn mark was predicted for the first half of September, which coincided with this announcement.
I’m very interested in seeing what kind of traffic iTunes movies will have; I am very enthused by the news that Wal*Mart might potentially work together with the iTunes store. Wal*Mart is the largest sole retailer of DVDs, but as I am sure, they realize the business of physical distribution of data has an expiration date.
At this point, the iTunes Store - a rename of the original iTunes Music Store - has huge potential. I am convinced the non-Disney studios have no choice but to eventually join, and I am happy Apple did not water down their terms of service (to the best of my knowledge) to appease them. iTunes presents a money-on-the-table opportunity for them, and they’d be crazy to not jump the wagon. I thus expect them to resist until the first quarter of 2007, right after the shopping season, where most DVDs are bought, largely as gifts. As this is not the market iTunes would serve well for now, their interest in joining iTunes is displaced by the potential alienation of their largest distributors, who would do a better job of serving the holiday season anyway.
Apple iTunes Sales Statistics
The following statistics have been collected directly from Apple using the iTunes music store counter during the 1 billion downloads promotion period. Please keep in mind that Apple does not differentiate between sales and downloads, and that these numbers reflect downloads, which might include free songs, promotions, et cetera.
| During this time period: | max | 3620030 | min | 2662693 | avg | 3028006 |
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Apple official milestones
The data shown below reflect press release official milestones as published by Apple on their website.
At the last available reading, on 2006-02-23 iTunes had been 1032 days old, giving an average download rate of 969074 songs per day. By a simplistic logarithmic calculation, the number of downloads has doubled approximately 29 times, or about once every 34 days. Assuming Moore’s law holds, iTunes grows 1586% faster than digital storage capacity and microprocessor power.
We can try to formalize the data a little bit better. A simple linear regression to the second degree (using the least squares method) gives us the following trend:
The red line shows the best polynomial fit for the data, and we can see that if this growth continues, we expect iTunes to reach 2 billion downloads by February 2007.
These iTunes downloads stats are processed automatically and are based on official iTunes press releases and data. This site is not affiliated with iTunes or Apple in any way, and no guarantee or warranty is given for the correctness of the data. Last refreshed Thu Sep 21 20:37:30 2006 GMT.