The Most Successful Store No One Cares About: Apple's iTunes Posts a Record $1.4 Billion Quarter

If any other retailer saw sales jump 27 percent in the last year, it would be showered with praise.

But that’s the downside for iTunes: It gets ignored by analysts who are much more interested in iPhone and iPad sales numbers–which are even more impressive. (iPhone sales and revenue are both up more than 100 percent!)

Still, since Apple spelled it out, let’s repeat it here: Its digital storefront did more than $1.4 billion in sales in the last quarter. That’s a new record for the company, up from $1.1 billion a year ago.

Apple doesn’t break out the mix of those sales, but my hunch is that most of the growth has been fueled by the app store, since digital music has been flat, at least in the U.S., for a while. And Apple’s TV and book sales are relatively tiny.

Regardless of how the mix breaks down, Apple can use the numbers as yet more evidence–not that it really needs any–that people are more than willing to spend money on its digital goods.

Which is nice to have as it continues to go back and forth with media companies over its subscription plans, which kick in this summer.

And for what it’s worth, a single analyst did try to get Apple COO Tim Cook to talk about iTunes during this afternoon’s earnings call, by asking him about plans for the cloud (and, by extension, it’s plans for that big data center, and streaming video and music and everything else). No dice.