Apple becomes America's top music retailer
4 Apr 2008 | 16:46 BST
Duffs up Walmart
APPLE HAS ACHIEVED a milestone as the company outstripped Wal-Mart to become America's No. 1 music retailer, the first time that a supplier of digital downloads has ever beaten the big CD dealers.
The fruity toymakers claim is based on the latest data from the market research firm, NPD Group.
The survey counted every 12 digital downloads as one whole CD and excluded mobile music sales and sales revenue. Apple reckons it has 50 million customers, which helped its Itunes platform sell over four billion tracks since launching in 2003. This is due, in no small part, to the immense popularity of the Ipod.
According to the LA Times, NPD Group analyst Russ Crupnick predicted that Apple's music industry power would only continue. "If you look at what is happening to the CD and the growth of the digital side, it's a pattern that is going to hold," he said.
The announcement validates an earlier report from Arstechnica which reckoned Apple had earned a 19 per cent share of all US-based retail music sales in January, just good enough to push it past industry leader Wal-Mart, which secured a 15 per cent share for the same period.
An NDP survey that had been released in February had shown that Itunes had muscled its way to the No. 2 spot in 2007, outdoing Best Buy. µ
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