US market research group Forrester has done a survey among North American consumers. Survey says that since January 2006 the number of monthly iTunes transactions has declined 58 %, while the average size per purchase declined by 17 %, leading to a 65 % overall drop in monthly iTunes revenue.
"It is too soon to tell if this decline was seasonal or if buyers were reaching their saturation level for digital music," Forrester said in the report.
iTunes Music Store is the most popular online shop which has sold about 1.5 billion music tracks and 10 million TV shows and movies.
The sales decrease came after a rapid increase in 2004 to 2006 January when the average transaction size became $6.69 from $3.55. The revenue of Apple almost doubled.
An Apple spokesman says that the increase of sales is not correct, but Forrester says that lots of consumers buy only a few songs, and there are only a few heavy buyers who support average sales.
"Only Apple knows just how much profit there is at the end of the day on a US$1.98 credit card transaction for two songs, but with transaction costs, hosting costs, and the wholesale price of the songs, there's not much margin left," Forrester said.
In average, only 3 % of the consumers buy online digital music. The others still buy music on CDs. But Apple is the biggest digital music seller, despite of sales increase.
By Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ
Posted December 14th, 2006 by ruzik_tuzik
