Piper Jaffray's recently-completed 11th semi-annual survey of teenagers found that 77% of those who own an MP3 player own some type of iPod, up from 74% in fall 2005, while 71% of those who use an online music service use iTunes, which is a leap from the 64% who said so last fall. "It appears that Apple's market share among this demographic has not yet hit a plateau, but is expanding," analyst Gene Munster wrote. "We believe the teen market is a critical demographic in digital music."

The survey also showed that 76% of the overall respondents own an MP3 player of any kind, up from 61% last fall. 41% of the group also said they will likely buy an MP3 player within the next year, with 88% of them saying they would buy an iPod, which is up from 79% last fall.

"Downloading online is clearly the dominant way that high schoolers get music," Mr. Munster wrote, noting that 82% of the respondents use online music stores and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to obtain their tunes, which is up from 75% last fall. However, while 77% of them said last fall that they download music illegally from P2P networks, that percentage is now 65%.

With a possible "iPhone" one of the hot topics on the Internet right now, Piper Jaffray also asked teens about buying a cell phone that includes a 1GB iPod. 70% of them said they would be interested in buying it, although none of them said they would pay more than US$300 for it.

Piper Jaffray visited 12 high schools across the country and asked 433 students about digital music. The average age of the students was 16.8, with 58% of them female and 42% of them male.