Archives
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- October 2003
- June 2003
- January 2003
- December 2002
- June 2002
- January 2002
- January 2001
- May 2000
- April 2000
Categories
Meta
Monthly Archives: June 2005
Apple Ascending
Apple dominates the digital music market and, one could argue, it does so because it invented it, or to be more accurate, reinvented it. Technically, it was Napster that invented the digital distribution of music and Kazaa that later dominated it, once Napster had been felled by legal action. Neither of these companies enabled a commercial market for digital music, they just created a popular mechanism for copyright theft.
When the music industry failed to stop Kazaa by legal action, many commentators wondered whether the music industry was doomed to death by digital theft. Why would anyone ever pay for music over the Internet when it was so easy to steal it?
In April 2003, Apple began to provide the answer to that question, when it launched the iTunes store and sold a million songs in its first week of operation. Of course, music theft didn’t suddenly stop dead in its stolen tracksit continued to continue, but Apple had demonstrated that a well designed Internet music store could be cool, convenient and financially viable. It may even turn out to be profitable. At the last count iTunes had sold upwards of 400 million tracks or, to look at it another way, about 18 tracks to everyone who bought an iPod.
More importantly, from Apple’s perspective, the iTunes store has become a promotional phenomenon in the music business. It can claim credit for the success of a number of groups, such as Rogue Wave and Postal Service, and is now regarded by some as more influential in the music business than MTV. This is why U2 partnered with Apple to launch its How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, album. Vertigo, one of the tracks from the album, became the soundtrack for an iPod advert and a special red and black U2-endorsed iPod went on sale.
The iTunes store is not yet providing music video downloads, but there can be little doubt that it will in time. Apple is on the verge of achieving something quite awesome – superseding the Sony Walkman with the iPod and, quite possibly, superseding MTV with iTunes. And, in case you’ve forgotten, Apple is really a computer company.
Luckily for Apple, success in the music business is breeding success in the computer business. It’s what Wall Street is referring to as the halo effect. According to a survey by Morgan Stanley (published in March) iPod users are converting from Windows to the Mac at the remarkable rate of 19% – just under one in five. That’s a hell of a halo, given that iPods are selling in the millions. It probably has a great deal to do with the seemingly seamless integration between the iTunes, iMac and iPod, which really is impressive, and it may also be connected with the fact that there is a cheap entry level Mac (the Mac mini), which doesn’t cost a whole lot more than a high-end iPod.
In any event, the Apple renaissance, that Apple fans have been praying for for so long, is clearly happening. But will Apple know how to ride the wave this time around?
Posted in Apple
Tagged Apple, Internet music store;, Mac, Morgan Stanley;, MTV;, Postal Service;, Rogue Wave;, Sony, U2;, Vendor, Vertigo;, Wall Street;
Leave a comment
Is Firefox already the dominant browser?
Go to www.boingboing.net and take a look at the monthly stats. They change all the time (as they are updated regularly) and when I last looked they showed 38% of visitors to the BoingBoing web site were Firefox users, 34.9% Internet Explorer users and 10% Safari users (Safari is Apple’s browser). So is this telling us that Firefox has already become the dominant browser?
Well, probably not – but it is certainly dominant among visitors to BoingBoing and there is nothing that I can detect about the site that would give a statistical twist in favour of one browser rather than another. However, other sites tell a different story.
Stats from PCWorld,com, published on June 1st, suggest that Firefox was used by just over 20 percent of visitors while IE 6.0 was used by 66 percent. This site may mitigate in favour of IE users, but that’s by no means certain.
In any event, what these sites are reflecting is which browsers are actually used, not which browsers are loaded on PCs. In all probability Firefox users surf the web more frequently than IE users and thus they get counted more. Taking myself as an example, I use Firefox on a Windows PC and a Windows laptop, but I use Safari on my Apple. However, I have IE loaded on all three machines to access those sites where only IE works (like PlaceWare, for example). So how do I figure in the stats?
Well, I can be counted as 3 machines. All have IE loaded, two have Firefox loaded and one has Safari loaded, but actually I use Safari most of the time. When I don’t use Safari, I use Firefox and I use IE once every week at most. My rough guess is that I’m 80 percent Safari, 18 percent Firefox and 2 percent IE. So, in terms of web activity, you are most likely to catch me using Safari.
Perhaps this phenomenon explains the disparity you get when you examine stats provided by market research companies. WebSideStory, for example, currently presents a quite different market picture, giving Firefox just less than 7 percent market share. Its statistics show Firefox having grown by 66 percent since December 2004 in terms of market share from around 4 percent. The company also highlights the fact that there are significant geographical differences, with Firefox having about a 22 percent share of the German market, but only 3 percent in Japan. Another company, OneStat.com, give Firefox an 8.45 percent share (figures are from March 2005). These figures may reflect the percentage of PCs that have Firefox loaded, but who knows?
All Windows PCs, and Apple PCs too, are shipped with IE loaded. IE is, in fact, fully embedded in Windows. Microsoft wasn’t actually lying when it maintained in its antitrust case that IE was an integral part of Windows. Technically it is. Indeed it would be difficult to fully remove it from Windows and foolish to try.
Consequently, unless there is a dramatic rise in the number of Linux PCs sold, IE is always going to have around 50 percent market share, even if no-one ever uses it.
So, getting back to the question, which really is the dominant browser? I suspect that, by usage, it’s still IE, but judging by the continuing enthusiasm for Firefox, it won’t remain that way for long.