Consumers Storm iTunes on Christmas Day

By Ian Bell Published December 27, 2006

In addition to the surge of iTunes visitors, the Apple Store also showed a large increase of traffic; 110 percent compared to Christmas day 2005.

Probably the most surprising event of the day however was taking place at Zune.net which showed an increase of 1,030 precent in overall traffic. However that number does not count for the number of song downloads from the Zune marketplace, but rather shows the number of people downloading the music "software" for the media player, according to the Hitwise report.

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Zune traffic was completely overshadowed by iTunes though which outnumbered visits to Zune.net by 30 to 1.

"For the third holiday season in a row, the iPod has been the must-have Christmas gift," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise. "Competitive offerings have not yet succeeded in capturing the attention of music listeners, and the surge in visits to the Apple Store shows that iPod owners are also engaged in filling and accessorizing their new devices."

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