iTunes Visits Skyrocket 413 Percent on Christmas Day

The numbers are from Hitwise, not Apple, so take them with a grain of salt, because third party “competitive traffic analysis” is not an exact science. But Hitwise says Christmas Day visits to the iTunes Store outnumbered visits to the Zune store 30-1. (Part of that spread though, surely, is that most Zunes are brand-new, whereas a lot of people with existing iPods received iTunes gift cards.)

Anyway, last year Apple sold 14 million iPods in the holiday quarter; in 2004 they sold 4 million. I’ve seen analysts picking a number between 15-20 million for this year; I’m going out on a limb and predicting 24 million iPods.

★ Wednesday, 27 December 2006