Apple iTunes turns 10 with App Store in tow
Yesterday, Apple’s iTunes project turned ten years old, if you can believe it, showing that some things do really last on the Web, and also that some things can evolve and get better in the right hands.
When it came out of the gate, iTunes was an OS 9 application primarily intended to organize the music collections of its users. It is clear that Apple had the launch of the iPod in mind even then, and that they had big plans for iTunes. One must wonder if anyone at Apple had any idea how well their new program was going to do, and how much it would change the world. Given all else Steve Jobs and Apple have done to succeed in the last 10 years, it is almost possible to believe that Jobs did indeed see iTunes as a part of a much bigger plan that would help build Apple into the force it is today.
Over the last ten years, iTunes has supported the iPod’s success, done the same with the iPhone and apps, added video, internet radio, television, educational support, and book sales. Most of this really kicked off, according to a story on iPodnn, when Jobs and Apple added music sales in 2003. When they opened the iTunes store, they had 200,000 songs, each selling for 99 cents. In an event that presaged the success of the App Store, it sold a million songs in its first week. A couple of years later , users had downloaded over 500 million songs and Apple had added television shows and music videos.
Two years after that the iPhone hit the world stage, and iTunes was there to support the new handset with the App Store. Now, at ten years of age, iTunes has overseen the downloading of more than 10 billion songs and is nearing its 2 billionth app download. Not bad for a 10-year-old that gives all appearances of having a lot of good years left in it.
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