“On Wednesday night, Gene Munster was thinking about going to the movies; but he did something else instead. He spent $1.99 to watch a campy 1960s TV show on his laptop. The first season of the Munsters — a comedy about a family of monsters and their struggles to lead an all-American life — was available for download on iTunes. Munster, for obvious reasons, couldn’t resist,” Fred Vogelstein reports for Fortune “The experience reaffirmed something for Piper Jaffray’s Apple Computer analyst as he pondered the impact of Disney’s plans to buy Pixar — Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ other company: Most investors think there is a battle raging for control of the digital home, pitting the cable companies, the phone companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft and the entire consumer electronics industry against one another in a fight to the death. They’re wrong. In Munster’s view, Apple has already won.”
“It already is the defacto front end for our digital music experience, making it easy to listen on our iPod, computer speakers and increasingly our home stereo. Now, he says, with the access Apple will no doubt get to Disney (Research)’s vast library of movies and TV shows, iTunes is about to get a huge boost toward becoming the front end for our digital TV and movie experience too,” Vogelstein reports. “‘What happens when you can beam shows from your computer or iPod wirelessly to your TV?’ he asks. ‘You have a Tivo (and a music player) that you can take anywhere.’ iPods and TVs don’t have that ability yet but they will soon, he believes. ‘iTunes will be the software that runs your living room.'”
“Right now you can’t research, download, organize and listen/watch music and TV shows at home or on the road with anything else but iTunes. Meanwhile, its lead as the Windows of digital entertainment is only growing. Despite a raft of challenges last year, including a very credible push by Yahoo, the iPod and by extension, Apple and iTunes, had its biggest year ever. Thirty two million of the 42 million iPods ever sold were sold in 2005,” Vogelstein reports. “Even competitors privately acknowledge that in online music, at least, iTunes has almost unstoppable Microsoft/Ebay-like network effects. With, by Munster’s count, 50 million copies in circulation and songs now selling at a rate of 1 million a day, artists, labels and advertisers want to be on iTunes because everyone else is on iTunes.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: iTunes songs are currently selling at a rate of over 3 million per day, not 1 million as stated in the article.
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