Lasse Penttinen
15 Oct 2003 11:06
The Apple iTunes music service has been a huge success. It has attracted a lot of users and generated online sales unseen in the music industry. Now iTunes is facing the real challenge, as it prepares to enter the PC / Windows market. How will the technically more aware Windows users respond to this new service? Can it seriously compete with various free Peer-To-Peer file sharing networks?
"They're going to have a serious problem with the Windows community," said Rob Enderle, principal of market research firm the Enderle Group. "If they could have gone there first, they could have carved out a beachhead."Source:Yahoo!
Apple unveiled the iTunes service for the 3 percent of the PC market that uses Macintosh computers in April. Incorporated into its popular and easy-to-use iTunes software for managing digitized songs, the interface is simple, and songs cost 99 cents each to download.
The service took off, and the Cupertino, California, company has sold more than 10 million songs in the five months since launching the service, which has more than 200,000 songs for sale.
"The service has done great on the Mac side," Enderle said.