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iTunes Use Surges Past QuickTime, RealPlayer
QuatermassX writes "Forget increased sales of Mac computers, think media players. The iPod 'halo effect' shows its true power in recently compiled statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings and Apple. From the report on WebSiteOptimization.com: 'Podcasting is taking off and iPods are seemingly ubiquitous. Unique users of Apple's iTunes player should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with nearly 30 million users in the US alone. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers.'"
I don't own an MP3 player, but occasionaly listen to 'podcasts' on my computer but I've no idea how representative I am.
How good a solution to general multimedia handling is iTunes? Why might a non-iPod user like me use it?
Simon Hibbs
Quite true, and given the number of iPod users that readily advocate it, the adoption rate is high enough i'm sure. Real...I don't have much to say about Real products. At least nothing that hasn't already been said.
Did you notice that Microsoft is on a linear growth "curve" no doubt due to OS sales. :)
iTunes is growing faster though, so if this trend continues, in a year or two, iTunes will be the No 1 media player on the market. Not bad at all. God bless those iPods
Reminds me of Netscape when they launched version 4 and announced that Windows will become irrelevant as people will spend most of their time in Netscape. Is it possible that iTunes will do that in the near future as people will increasingly use their computers for entertainment (and not TV, radio, DVDs, outdoor activities, etc.)?
A hungry bear does not dance!
The QuickTime Player does come bundled with the Windows version of iTunes though. Quite annoying, if you ask me. It's come to the point that I don't update iTunes anymore because for every bloody minor version I have to download yet another version of the QuickTime Player (that I didn't ask for) only to have it throw its icons around my start menu and completely ignore my preferences by showing up in the system tray.
I'm really eager to ditch MP3s for a couple reasons. First, I understand that AAC sounds at least twice as good at comparable bitrates. Second, I'm no more trusting of the MP3 coalition than I was of the JPG owners, whereas I can't picture apple ever seeking royalty backpayments from podcasters using the AAC format.
An obvious solution is to provide both MP3 and AAC files, but I'm lazy and would prefer to offer only one format. Any thoughts on whether it makes sense for a podcaster to switch entirely to AAC? I'm sure most of my listeners would appreciate the enhanced sound quality. But what percentage of my listeners would be likely to disappear?
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
If the former is the case, then it is completely bogus. It is very difficult to get Quicktime without the iTunes bundle, first you need to know that they are bundled, then you need to google the link as the standalone Quicktime installer is hidden away on the site. I've never found a link to it on the Apple site.
And everyone has the Quicktime player on their PC. It's in the list of bog-standard things you do when installing e.g. Windows for someone. Quicktime, Firefox, RealPlayer (maybe) and Acrobad Reader. The reason RealPlayer is a maybe is because they have been doing some pretty shoddy tactics to get their marketshare and profits up. Things like hiding the free cut-down version on the site, so that you have to download other nonsense that you don't want.
Sounds like Apple has been reading Real's playbook. Just because someone has iTunes on their PC, it doesn't mean that they are an iTunes user. Especially when they trojaned the iTunes install in via a Quicktime download. The bottom line however is that Apple want to be able to say to the music industry that "we have X million users" when really they are saying "we have X million users running iTunesService.exe, but only a fraction of them actually use iTunes, but we want to omit that detail as the former marketing point is technically correct and way more sexy".
It's certainly a hefty package. I once noticed itunes added 50+ secs to a fresh windows instalation. You don't have to used iTunes at all, If you have an iPod shuffle - you can use the "rebuild_db.exe" 9k application and simple drag and drop your music onto the player.
Precisely. I have been telling people for years, QuickTime is the crown jewel at Apple, and many of the most successful projects, like the iPod and iTunes, were created in the hopes of pushing QuickTime adoption on Windows.
As a web video and multimedia programmer, I have long wished for one universal standard based on QuickTime. Everyone's web experience would be so much better if we could all standardize around QT. But many times I encounter users who work in corporate IT environments with locked down PCs that are forbidden from installing QT. This seems to be a relic of olden times when online video and audio were seen as frivolous, and a big waste of bandwidth.
Quicktime, like AVI, is a container. It forms part of a format, with the encoding of the actual moving images or audio waves being seperate from the encoding of the container. We generally seperate the two in terminology, the encoding of the images or waves being termed a codec.
In some cases, both formats use well documented codecs, in others they don't. A substantial amount of Quicktime content is encoded using Sorensen codecs. These are not documented, and due to a licensing agreement, are only available for Apple's implementation of Quicktime. Apple has veto power on what devices can use Sorensen codecs.
The reason, therefore, why there's no universal reader is because there cannot be. Microsoft, to use an example, cannot license "Quicktime" except for the publically documented, publically available, format and codecs. A substantial amount of content would not play under such a player. (Likewise, VLC cannot license most of WMV, though they're doing what they can.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
According to TFA, in January '06, there were 18,568,000 unique users of iTunes. In 2005, Apple sold 32 million iPods.
That's 32 million iPods and 18.5 million iTunes users. What are the other 14 million people using to get music into their iPods? The only way the 18.5 million iTunes users could be true would be if people, on average, bought two iPods for themselves over the course of the year.
- Tony
Why wasn't Flash included in the survey?
Because it would be impossible to discern any difference whatsoever betweeen WM/RP/QT - the Flash graph line would be several inches above the rest.
This is a comparison of fringe media players. I guess they've conceded the race is over as any relevant survey would embarrass all three.