AfterDawn: News

Since it's launch in Japan just last week, Apple's iTunes music store has already sold over 1,000,000 legal music downloads. This makes it the most successful launch of any of the 20 countries currently offering iTunes. Worldwide, Apple has sold about 500,000,000 downloads currently and accounts for 80% of all legal music downloads in the United States. Apple's iPod music player now seems set to become quite a success in Japan, but faces stiff competition.

Sony is already doing very well with it's MP3 player line-up in Japan. Apple is hoping to mimic the success it had with it's iPod device in many other countries since 2001. Over 22 million iPods have been sold so far since the device was first released. The million song sales in 4 days is more success than Apple had thought iTunes would receive this early in Japan. "We are extremely happy with the results," said Eddy Cue, vice-president of applications at Apple Computer. "We think we have got a huge success."



The store sells most songs for 150 yen, about $1.35. About 15 Japanese record labels have signed up with iTunes currently, but Sony Music Entertainment has not yet.

Source:
BBC News

Written by: James Delahunty @ 8 Aug 2005 18:23