Music sales are more profitable than peripheral sales?

I think 450M is a revenue number. Multiply by 0.05 and you get the money Apple actually sees (22.5M), and then realize that much of that goes into costs. The online music business is a tough one, and Apple uses it to drive iPod sales, which drive hardware sales.

If online music were easy, everyone would be succeeding at it instead of falling of the bandwagon so damn hard.

That statement struck me as odd too.

Doesn't Apple pocket something like $.02 for each song they sell?

It's not that low and the original estimates were based on MUCH lower volume of music sales. The volume Apple is selling now and is on pace to sell is astonishing and is making the Music Store a money maker in itself.

when Ipod sales dry up the music store will still be going strong.

And the Movie store still yet to come.

How many Windows iPod users are there? What does that 11percent translate to as a rough number?

Apple won't really say, or rather, doesn't break it down. But now that Apple is only shipping with USB 2.0 cables, it appears enough to cater to the PC crowd. Based on the latest Q1 numbers, and some simple addition on my part, I figured the total sales of ipods to be around 7 million. Based on old figures of PCs in the household from about 2003, there was an estimated 110 million people with a computer. Which equates to there being about 7% of ipods per computer or 7 million ipods total. Factor in the marketshare for Macs at 2% and you get about 140,000 iPods in use by Mac users, and 6,860,000 iPods in use by PC users. 11% of the PC user base equates to roughly 754,600 switchers...

Though it has been a long day, and I may be waaaaay off on this math, but whatever....If anyone can do better, by all means, have at it...

Methinks your math is waaaay off, or at least waaay off

At Macworld, Jobs held up the 10 millionth iPod. Sales estimates for this year (based on analysts) are 26 million units. And people think the iPod is ubiquitous *now*.

If we're measuring just the halo effect from these 26 million units we're looking at 2-2.5 million switchers.

I'm one of that number.

over a million+ switchers in 2005 would totally kick ass. that would pretty much give apple a tough time pumping out Mac minis and iMacs to keep up with demand for the rest of 2005.

AUSTRALIA has seen a 49% JUMP IN MAC SALES
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/02/21.9.shtml