James Delahunty
18 Jul 2005 17:24
Apple has got reason once again to celebrate the success of its hugely popular iTunes music store as the total number of legal download sales is now over half a billion. The store has been open for about the last two years and continues to spread to new countries around the world. It features about 1.5 million songs from over 1,000 labels around the world. Also as Apple promised they gave a nice prize to the buyer of the 500 millionth download.
Amy Greer, of Lafayette, Indiana made the 500,000,000th download, which was Faith Hill's "Mississippi Girl". For that download she has now won 10 iPods (model and colours are her choice), a 10,000 song voucher for the iTunes music store, a trip to see Coldplay and a backstage pass to meet up with the band at the show. iPod prizes were also given to several other buyers of every 100,000th download for the past few weeks.
Steve Jobs surprised analysts also last week by announcing an excellent quarter for Apple. In the three months to June 2004, the California based firm's profit rose to $320m (£262.6m), up from $61m in the same quarter a year ago. Sales surged 75% to $3.52bn. As many of you may have guessed, the biggest factor behind the success was a six-fold increase in the sales of iPods. "We are delighted to report Apple's best quarter ever in both revenue and earnings," Mr Jobs said.
Source:
Chicago Tribune