Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Apple’s $8 Billion Media Business

Apple is really in the hardware business, not the software business — it just uses the sales of apps, music, movies, etc., to help sell gadgets.

But boy does it sell a lot of software: iTunes sales came in at $1.9 billion last quarter, which puts the digital store at a run rate of $8 billion.

That’s up 35 percent from a year ago, when iTunes did $1.4 billion.

During Apple’s conference call today, CFO Peter Oppenheimer answered a query about delays getting new content into iTunes with a boast about the depth of the store’s music and video catalog. But as always, my assumption is that the bulk of that growth is fueled by app sales, not traditional media sales.

 

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”