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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul



Thursday, December 21, 2006

iTunes sales: Up or down?

I can't personally say whether sales at the iTunes Store are up, down, or indifferent, but I do know that they're certainly not making up for the drop in CD sales. That said, the WSJ this week took another look at the controversy of competing analysts:
A report last week from Forrester Research dropped a bombshell: Sales at Apple's iTunes music store were off as much as 65% from the beginning of the year, Forrester said, after surging last year.

Other reports followed, quickly turning iTunes sales into a statistical roller coaster. Online-research company comScore Networks released a report saying "sales are surging" at iTunes, estimating that sales for the first nine months of 2006 were up 84% from the same period a year earlier. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster issued a research report saying sales were up 78% on that same basis. Josh Bernoff, the author of the Forrester report, fired back on his blog, pointing to numbers from Nielsen SoundScan -- published in a chart in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month -- showing digital music on the decline from the beginning of the year.

The figures being circulated represent best guesses. Apple doesn't break out iTunes sales in its financial reports. A spokeswoman would tell me only that "the conclusion that iTunes sales are slowing is simply incorrect."
[ Posted at 3:43 PM | Permalink ]

 



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