News

Holiday Traffic Overwhelms iTunes Store

Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 10:10 AM - by

The popularity of Apple's iPod stretched the iTunes Store to the limit after the Christmas holiday as new iPod owners and iTunes gift card holders overwhelmed the online music store. Some iTunes Store shoppers received error messages, and others experienced song download times of up to 20 minutes, according to Forbes.

Apple hasn't commented on what the cause of the slowdown was, but analysts expect it was because so many people were trying to access the store at the same time. The iTunes Store has since recovered and is operating at normal speed again.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster commented "[The incident] actually created more positive buzz among analysts - traffic was so great it blew up the site. If anything it could be a positive - demand was better than they were expecting."

Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director with JupiterResearch, saw the store slowdown as a positive event, too. "What you're seeing is the tremendous success of the iPod."

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Rainy Day said:

member since 07 Jun 2005 with 607 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:01 pm

Well duh! Of course it’s a positive: means lots of iPod sales.

iTunes downloads were also up 400+%

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