2005-Year of iPod in Japan

Apple's iPod is an overwhelming success in Japan. The company has a roughly 60 percent marketshare--as of the middle of November--in the country, or about six times that of its archrival Sony. A column in the The Daily Yomiuri calls 2005 the ; however, despite the success of the iPod and iTunes Japan, music sales continue to fall: "While iTunes and the iPod captured the public's imagination, overall music sales kept falling this year. In the first 11 months of 2005, shipments of audio software by the Recording Industry Association of Japan's 41 member companies totaled 278.4 million units, down 2 percent compared with the corresponding period of 2004, for a value of 330 billion yen, down 3 percent....And just one single, the aforementioned "Seishun Amigo," managed to sell more than a million copies, in contrast to the late '90s, when at least 10 singles sold that amount each year."

by MacNN Staff