Apple's iTunes on-line store was launched at the end of April
and quickly became the most successful fee-based service to date
for authorised music downloads. The company sold one million
downloads over the first week, and in September announced that it
had sold more than ten million songs.
But iTunes has only been available for Mac users to date, and in
the period since its launch, other companies have provided similar
services for PCs. MusicMatch and BuyMusic.com are settled into the
market, while a resurrected and authorised Napster is due to
officially launch its 99 cent download service on 29th October.
According to Reuters, Apple has invited journalists to an
"event" on Thursday, offering as bait the promise that, "The year's
biggest music story is about to get even bigger."
But a Windows launch for iTunes is not guaranteed to be a
success. As Rob Enderle, head of market analysts the Enderle Group
told Reuters, "They're going to have a serious problem with the
Windows community". He added, "If they could have gone there first,
they could have carved out a beachhead."
