“Podcasting is taking off, according to recent data from Nielsen//NetRatings and Apple. Unique users of Apple’s iTunes player passed QuickTime in mid-2005, and at current growth rates iTunes should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player,” WebSiteOptimization.com reports based on Nielsen//NetRatings research.
“Despite its late entry into the streaming media arena, Apple’s iTunes player is climbing the charts faster than its competitors. iTunes has eclipsed QuickTime in unique users, and should pass RealPlayer in mid-2006 at current growth rates. Only Microsoft’s Windows Media Player will have more unique users than iTunes. In mid-2006 Microsoft’s player will have about 80 million unique users, while iTunes will have just under 30 million,” WebSiteOptimization.com reports. “iTunes is used over twice as long as its nearest rival RealPlayer (111 minutes versus 46.4 minutes per person, or 2.4 times as long). Besides iTunes, RealPlayer is the only other player surveyed to show growth in usage over the last three years. QuickTime and Windows Media Player are losing mindshare among users.”
Streaming Media Players – Unique Users 2006 (Source: Nielsen//NetRatings)
1. Windows Media Player – 71,112,000
2. RealPlayer – 28,687,000
3. Apple iTunes – 18,568,000
4. Apple QuickTime – 12,817,000
Full article with charts here.
MacDailyNews Take: As iTunes is QuickTime-based, adding the Nielsen//NetRatings for both QuickTime products puts Apple’s solution ahead of RealPlayer already, 31,385,000 to 28,687,000. That’s a lot of Krispy Kremes! Now, these Nielsen//NetRatings QuickTime numbers are always strange to us. Apple, on June 6, 2005, stated that “nearly a billion copies” of QuickTime have been downloaded all-time. Still, by whatever measure, QuickTime use is obviously rising rapidly and those media outlets that insist on streaming in the limited choice of either Windows Media or Real need to rethink their delivery choices. Why would any company that offers online video provide content playable in the third place player and not the second place player that’s growing more rapidly than all others?
We encourage our readers to write to online content providers that offer only Windows Media and/or Real and ask that they include QuickTime. Based on the Nielsen//NetRatings report alone, they should already have done so long ago.
Let’s use the Reader Feedback below constructively by identifying online video providers that should be providing the QuickTime choice and providing contact information. We’ll start:
The Beeb (BBC): offers only choice of Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. Contact info (online form): http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/bbci_comment.shtml
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Hey wake up BBC in the UK! Real is dead meat… QT is the future
CNN videos are also Windows Media Player only.
Send feedback to:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form9a.html
CBS News offers only WMP or Real.
Contact: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/feedback/fb_news_form.shtml
Nashville Star, a country version of American Idol on the USA Network, now offers downloads from the show – but only for Windows based PCs.
http://www.usanetwork.com/series/nashvillestar/downloads/music/index.html
All installs of iTunes require QuickTime.
iTunes is basically QuickTime with a different UI, so how can QuickTime be behind iTunes?
Still good to see Apple doing well in this area.
As I’ve said on here in the past, NPR used to stream in Real Player and QuickTime until just about the time Microsoft became one of their major sponsors. I don’t know if they still sponsor NPR but . . .
http://www.npr.org/contact/
Real sucks for real!
It would sure be nice if Apple would reverse engineer WMV and add compatibility to QT.
On the other hand it looks like Windows itself will become the ultimate compatibility translator for Mac users, just please make it VPC not dual boot.
iTunes is not really a streaming content solution for online news websites and things like that. Yes, you can use it, but it’s not practical.
Which means the competitors add up to close 100 million with Quicktime at 12 million. That’s not exactly proof that website should’ve added Quicktime support “A long time ago”, especially since RealPlayer is essentially cross platform just as much as Quicktime.
Just thought I’d point that out.
Dutch public television: all Windows Media, most Real, nothing QuickTime.
http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/
I demand QuickTime. QuickTime for Linux that is. At the moment Real is the only solution that everyone can use. Apple coulc change that by taking QuickTime and iTunes to our penguin friendly cousins.
Then we could lobby Real right out of the equation.
This doesn’t make any sense. Can somebody clarify? EVERY SINGLE iTunes installation has QuickTime installed. Not every QuickTime installation has iTunes installed. So how can iTunes have more users than iTunes?
They must mean something different by “Users of QuickTime” than simply “people who use QuickTime.” Color me mystified.
OK, it is a tiny country when it comes to population but one of the richest in the world all the same – Norway – and its public service; Norwegian National Broadcasting or Norsk Rikskringkasting – NRK – only uses Windows and has some lame excuses for doing so; because most people use it! What about quality issues?
http://www.nrk.no/
The Neilson/Netratings numbers only count the use of QuickTime on the web using the QuickTime Player. They aren’t able to count the use of QuickTime when it is player in a browser.
I wonder what the stats are for the Flash Videos. I’ve been seeing more and more of them.
42 million iPods sold (at least) – each comes with iTunes.
Is my math wrong or are these figures a bit low?
http://discoverychannel.ca
WMP only, and usually broken for the Mac. I have discussed this at length with them. They don’t get it. “Everybody uses Windows.” “We have no money to so anything else or anything more.”
Boo on MDN!!
heavily censoring posts here, like that’s really going to stop people from posting what they want, in fact it might even compound things even more.
The BBC and CBS really don’t care about what email people send in, they look at hit traffic, browser specifics and costs in their decision making.
If you really want to do something, set up a script to visit their sites in Safari or set it as your home page.
http://discoverychannel.ca
Forgot to mention. The only way to winge seems to be through the forums, which are accessible from the menus at the top of the page.
At this point, the QuickTime numbers may be partially representative of the old OS 9/ pre-OS X v10.2 user base. If accurate, these numbers also may indicate why so many media companies don’t bother posting QuickTime versions of audio and video clips on their Web sites…
MDN: Regarding your conclusion “…by whatever measure, QuickTime use is obviously rising rapidly…” How do you deduce this from the numbers?
iTunes use is rising rapidly (and with it, QuickTime use). But these numbers appear to indicate that use of the QuickTime Player are stagnant — and at at the very bottom of the pile compared to the Real Player and the Windows Media Player.
Funnily enough I had a pop at the BBC the other week about this. I don’t have their reply now but they said it would not be cost effective for them to do it. What peed me off was the declining quality of the Real service. It’s getting worse by the day.
On Quicktime for PC’s, I know a number of people who have complained about it because it ‘takes over their PC’. I hope Apple now have it loading on a PC with as little fuss as iTunes does…
“… It would sure be nice if Apple would reverse engineer WMV and add compatibility to QT…”
See http://www.flip4mac.com/
I’ve been bugging Comedy Central for a year or so –
their “motherload” of videos always says it only runs on PC’s with windows in such an such a version.
Although some clicking around makes things work anyway, you’d think that such an “anti – Politically Correct” station would be less PC in their web content.
And with the new Podcasting of the daily show and others on itunes, I’d expect things to change . . .
J
I just tried to play CBS evening News videos for the first time after installing Flip4Mac WMV Player, which Microsoft officially recommends as a replacement for Windows Media Player. Until now, it’s worked flawlessly, WMV Player would not play CBS News videos, and Real Player no longer works either. Here’s the complaint message I sent to CBS News:
Videos like the one below are not playing at all on my 2005 Apple Mac PowerBook. Mac OS X (v10.4.5), Apple Safari (v2.0.3/417.9.2):
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?channel=eveningnews
A couple of months ago, these files played fine using either the Real Media or Windows Media Players.
Installed Players
– Windows Media Player (v9 for Mac)
– Flip4Mac WMV Player (v2.02.10) (Microsoft-recommended)
– Real Player (v9 for Mac)
– Apple QuickTime 7.04
– Apple iTunes (with QuickTime)
– DivX and assorted other players
You guys need to stay ahead of the fast moving curve here. Why isn’t this working? Where is iTunes/iPod support? iTunes is now growing faster than any traditional player on the market and is projected to pass Real in mid-2006 Player by mid-2006.
A few things:
1. I, too, find it odd that iTunes and Quicktime are separated since it’s really just Quicktime playing in iTunes, but I guess I understand.
2. I wonder how flip4mac (which is a phenomenal product BTW) will factor into Nielsen’s future ratings. Who will get the point, QT or WMP?
3. As it stands now, Windows users must download iTunes to get Quicktime. I think this is a mistake. I recently added some Quicktime movies to my company’s website with a link to download QT, and we caught hell from our customers who didn’t want iTunes. Many of them did not use their computers for music and didn’t want to go through the hassle or give up the drive space. I ended up re-encoding as MPEG so it would work in WMP too, but I really wanted to give Apple the extra installs. I think Apple needs to go back to having a separate QT-only install.
It would help in EU/ MS Media Player battle if the courts would just make it mandatory to each broadcaster to support the 3 major players. It would cost some money but that is money that MS should pay out.