http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/11/22/30.million.ipods/
Apple ships 30 millionth iPod
updated 02:20 pm EST, Tue November 22, 2005
30 million iPods
Apple announced today that it has shipped over 30 million iPods since 2001. Apple also said it has sold over 600 million songs via its iTunes Music Store since its launch. Gene Munster of investment research firm PiperJaffray recently said he expects Apple to reach 37 million iPods by the year's end. The holiday shopping season is expected to give a major boost to iPod sales, further bolstered by the availability of the iPod nano and video-capable iPod. “We expect the iPod to continue to be a foundation for growth in other parts of Apple’s business, and we expect that by the end of calendar 2005 more than 37m iPods will have shipped, providing Apple with a greater scope of awareness for various products.”
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
Approaching Significant
The 30M iPods is an impressive number, as is 600M tunes, but the really interesting statistic is the announcement that, at least by tracks sold, iTMS is the #7 music store in the US now, up from #13 last year.
Presuming that sales continue to rise equivalently, it won't be long before Apple is in the top 3 music retailers in the US. Since a vastly higher proportion of iTMS sales go directly to artists and record companies, that's going to put them in a very difficult to ignore position as much as the big record companies hate working with them. An installed base of 37 million players is hard to ignore, too.
Ah, how things grow interesting when the RIAA and co least want them to.