Report: Japan Tops U.S. For iTunes Fans

Nearly 25 percent of Japan’s music fans use Apple’s iTunes software, compared to 19 percent of the U.S. online population, a media measurement firm announced Tuesday.

The iTunes application, used by iPod and iPhone owners to purchase and organize digital music, found 23.7 percent penetration of the nation’s Internet users, according to comScore. Globally, 11.2 percent of the world’s Internet users prefer iTunes, the study found.

The UK had the second largest percentage of iTunes fans with 23.4 percent penetration coming a close second to the gadget-hungry island nation.

The U.S. was ranked third with 19.6 percent reach of iTunes. France and Germany completed the top five iTunes countries, the company reported.

“That’s not terribly surprising,” Gartner digital music analyst Mike McGuire told Cult of Mac. McGuire said it was a case of higher penetration of a much smaller market. There are 94 million Japanese Internet users versus 220 million in the United States.

The analyst also pointed to the importance of the exclusion of mobile phone, PDA or Internet cafe users.

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“I’m a bit surprised given that what I’ve been reading is that for the domestic Japanese market, music distribution has flipped to mobile (OTA), not PC-based downloads,” McGuire said.

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