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Measuring the iTunes video store

Jun 19, ’13 6:36 PM

It’s been five years since we had an update on TV show downloads and six years since we’ve had an update on movie downloads from Apple. In Q3 2008 Apple announced 200 million TV show downloads and in Q2 2007 2 million movies. That’s a long period with no information making a tough extrapolation to the present.

Nevertheless, I tried. My estimates for these two quantities were 963 million TV Shows and 108.2 million movies to date.

So I was quite surprised to see that figures for both TV show downloads and Movie downloads were published today. The figures were 1 billion and 380 million respectively.

My TV show forecast has proven to be very accurate but I severely underestimated movie download rates. Apple states that the movie download rate is 350k/day. My estimate  was only about 126k/day.

After adjusting for the new data, the picture of downloads that emerges looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013-06-19 at 6-19-6.20.31 PM

The overall iTunes gross revenues by sub-component becomes:

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Next Airshow: Chicago, July 13th

Jun 19, ’13 4:32 PM

We’re excited to bring the second Airshow to Chicago in July. Thanks to Ryan Singer and Jason Fried of 37signals.com for offering to host us this summer.  Their venue is ideal for our particular pedagogy.

Speaking of which, I should explain what it is.

Our first Airshow (San Francisco, June 9th) had several objectives:

  • To explain a theory of narration with data, especially big data
  • To narrate this explanation with a tool called Perspective
  • To reveal and test a new feature within Perspective called airshow

Now that we have revealed the feature (mirror your presentation including your direct manipulation of the visuals to any member of the audience—wherever they may be—on their own device, available in version 3.0) we can talk more freely about the structure of the show.

It’s in three parts:

  1. Performance
  2. Cooking Show
  3. Theory

The Performance is the “keynote story” whose recipe we show in the Cooking Show and whose motivation and foundations we deconstruct in the Theory. You can think of the sections as as answering “{What, How and Why} make a great story.”

The show is self-referential in that we use the process we teach to do the teaching. In other words, we use a great storytelling tool to tell great stories about storytelling. Furthermore, Airshow, as a show, uses a tool whose feature  is itself called airshow.

It’s not that complicated; at least not if you understand recursion.

Register here: airshow.asymco.com (Limited to 37, bring an iPad).

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The Critical Path #88: Siri in the Driver’s Seat

Jun 18, ’13 9:26 PM

In the second part of our WWDC wrapup, we delve into the large-scale shift represented by iOS 7. Siri guides us on the journey from navigation to consumption in our latest AsymCar segment, and Horace examines what iWork for iCloud means.

via 5by5 | The Critical Path #88: Siri in the Driver’s Seat.

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The Critical Path #87: De Gustibus

Jun 18, ’13 9:19 PM

In the first part of a post-WWDC “doubleheader”, we look back at AirShow and begin our dive into the keynote, with regard to Apples hardcore product Mac Pro, Mavericks, iTunes Radio, and examining discovery versus playback.

via 5by5 | The Critical Path #87: De Gustibus.

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What’s an Apple user worth?

Jun 14, ’13 1:31 PM

This week Apple announced that iTunes has 575 million accounts. This is the 8th update (that I know of) over the last four years. The history of this data is shown in the following graph.

Screen Shot 2013-06-14 at 6-14-1.13.02 PM

The number of accounts has increased by almost a factor of six since late 2009. It amounts to an account growth rate of about 500,000/day or 44% compounded annually. Not bad, but along with this increase what happened to revenues per user?

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