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Filed under: iTunes

iTunes accounting for 1/4 of all U.S. music sales

Overall, music sales fell by more than a billion dollars last year, but Apple's iTunes is doing better than ever. The digital music distribution service claimed more money than ever, and now represents the biggest U.S. market for music sales, making up over a quarter of total music sales in this country. Unfortunately, not even iTunes may save the industry; total music sales in the US only rose by 1.1 percent over the previous year (which, according to industry analysts, is as good as not growing at all), and the total worldwide market decreased to $17 billion. That's nothing to sneeze at, but the fact is that, even if more people are buying music through iTunes, less music is being sold. The way the trends are going, it looks like actual music sales themselves may start dropping off, even in the United States.

So what's the solution? The record industry is actually looking to iTunes now to save their own business. One executive is quoted as saying that an iTunes subscription service might be just the thing to get people interested in buying music again (or at least renting it). It would appear that, with the purchase of Lala, Apple may be laying the groundwork for a service like that.

However, there are a lot of other factors going into this market change (not the least of which is that it's easier than ever to make, buy, sell, and share music outside of the record industry system, which includes iTunes), and even a subscription service won't solve the problem.

Filed under: Apple Financial

Apple retail store sales climb 8%

Apple just continues to ignore the bad economic conditions -- sales at Apple Stores have reportedly gone up 8% during the quarter that ended in March. That's a pretty wholesome figure considering no new Apple computers were offered -- before you protest and ask about the iPad and the new MacBooks, don't forget that that's all happened since April started. So there was more traffic in the stores even before there were new shinies to buy.

This good news for Apple comes from analyst Charlie Wolf, from Needham & Company. He told investors that the March numbers followed 19.8 percent year-over-year growth of same-store sales in December. In March of last year, Mac retail sales were down about 22%.

Same-store year-over-year March Mac revenues were up 31.2 percent, while non-Mac revenues -- including software, iPhones, iPods and accessories increased by 14.5 percent. Starting in September of 2003, Apple has opened 123 U.S. stores. Apple's U.S. market share went from 3% to 9% according to Morgan Stanley. Those are numbers any company would covet.

[Via AppleInsider]

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Retail, Apple Financial, MacBook

Estimates emerge of Apple's Q1 iPhone, Mac sales

Apple typically reports their 1st quarter financial results in late January, so we'll have to wait a few more weeks for the official word. However, the analysts have begun to share their estimates and the numbers are very impressive.

Brian Marshall at Broadpoint.AmTech has estimated that Apple sold 3.3 million Macs during the last quarter, according to MacNN. Here's a little perspective: Apple's all-time sales record for Macs, set during the previous quarter, is 3.05 million. That record was a 17 percent jump from the 2.6 million it sold in the same quarter a year ago. Marshall also suggests that laptop sales could be up as much as 19 percent year-over-year at 865,000 units.

Meanwhile, Philip Elmer-DeWitt has begun gathering estimates of iPhone sales and posting them at Brainstorm Tech. They range from 11.30 units sold (Brian Marshall at Broadpoint AmTech) to 8.17 units (Mark Moskowitz, J.P. Morgan). The interesting thing is that the low estimate, 8.17 million iPhones sold, would represent a 10.8% increase from the last September's record of 7.37 million if true.

Despite would could have been a rocky year for Apple -- Steve Jobs was out for serious health reasons and a lousy US economy -- they did very well. Are you optimistic for 2010 or waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Filed under: Hardware, Retail, iMac

Overall Mac sales up 21%, desktops up 74% year over year

There's probably a number of reasons why this might have happened (and we're sure you can come up with more than we can), but nevertheless, here you go: overall Mac sales are up by 21 percent in October and November since last year at the same time, according to Gene Munster (not pictured), analyst at Piper Jaffray. Desktop Mac sales are especially huge, with the rise as high as 74%, which seems like a typo next to MacBook and MacBook Pro increases of just five percent. In fact, those gigantic desktop sales, some reason, might actually be the reason behind the recent iMac delays.

At any rate, no matter why, Apple is making a boatload on Macs this quarter already. Even without the bulk of the holiday season, the desktops were already flying off the shelves in huge numbers compared to last year.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Apple Financial, Steve Jobs, Apple

Apple's $18 billion stash

Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to the Financial Times, Apple currently has $18 billion sitting on their balance sheet, doing nothing much at all. And they're OK with that -- Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently said in the Q1 conference call that they like having that "flexibility." And after all, you never know when you might need to drop $18 billion on something important.

All that money doing nothing isn't so great for Apple's investors though, some of whom apparently want a piece of the pie. They might like to see dividends, stock buybacks, or even actual spending come out of that on Apple's part (later in the piece, I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%). But no -- Apple is flush with cash from all their big sales numbers, and they want to apparently stay that way.

[Via Ars]

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