iTunes slump draws belated attention

Angus Kidman
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 01:37

Business IT - Technology

In the Internet era, information is supposed to travel instantly, especially when it concerns hot technologies like the iPod. So how come it took most of the world more than a week to notice a report from Forrester Research suggesting that sales to iPod owners through the iTunes store weren't actually that impressive?

Forrester released the report, entitled 'Few iPod Owners Are Big iTunes Buyers', on December 6. iTWire ran the first story outlining its conclusions -- that iPod owners only buy on average 20 tracks from the iTunes store, and that sales have been steadily declining -- a day later.

However, the rest of the media stayed ignorant of the report until today, a development that not-so-surprisingly coincided with Forrester's weekly email to journalists explaining what research it had conducted over the past seven days. A glut of coverage followed, even if it was in effect old news.

Of course, there's been plenty of other activity for reporters covering the Apple beat in the past week, including the endless speculation about whether or not the iPhone will really be launched in early 2007. Perhaps journalists wanted to avoid writing a story saying 'Apple flops' at the same time that they were trying to get extra iPhone details out of their sources. However, given that Apple never talks to anyone anyway, and enjoys suing reporters who do find out about its plans early, that might be a risky strategy.