Is the Apple App Store ahead of the iTunes track?
When the iPod hit the streets and conquered the world of MP3 players, the iTunes store turned into one of the big hits of all time. It now appears that the Apple App Store is well ahead of the pace set by iTunes.
I think we can all remember that hectic period when the MP3 player was just starting to come into its own, when suddenly the Apple iPod became the portable music device that everybody had to have. The iPod became the poster child for the “in” product, the one that everyone just had to get. Sales records were set quarter after quarter, a trend which has hardly abated since.
Along with the meteoric rise of the iPod, the growth of the iTunes store is legendary. It quickly became the music store that everyone used, leaving the previously crowded field littered with the husks of former big players in the field. The sales graphs of the iPod and iTunes store were in lockstep. Everybody had to have an iPod and all of the iPod users were shopping at the iTunes store. Together, they were the juggernauts of the portable music business.
Part of the reason for the success of the iTunes store was the demographics of it’s users. According to a Business Week story, by 2005, people who purchased music from iTunes and similar stores online had family incomes of about $83,000, indicating a hefty amount of disposable annual income. Those figures were calculated by consultant NPD after the iTunes store had been in business for four full years.
Now comes analyst ComScore, looking at similar trends for the App Store. Even though the App Store has been around for less than a year, 35 percent of their buyers have annual household incomes of $100k or over, while the average buyers of mobile applications for the iPhone and iPod touch have annual incomes of over $75k.
It is pretty easy to see that the App Store has moved into the sweet spot of consumer demographics about four times faster than did the iTunes store. As large as the tidal wave of iPod success was for the iTunes store, the wave formed by the combination of the iPod Touch and the iPhone is yet larger.
The success of the iTunes store is still growing, and a large part of that success is the imbedded behemoth of the App Store. Now more than 15,000 apps strong and growing every day, it is soon to have a shot in the arm inspired by the introduction of the iPhone’s enhanced operating system and the more complex and impressive apps that it is inspiring. For Apple, the App Store is a bigger winner contained inside an already big winner, success begetting success.
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