Itunes

The following report discusses the strategies, planning and development process of iTunes to establish itself as one of the most powerful digital software that revolutionized the music and Smartphone industries.

It all began in the year 2000 when Steve Jobs, Apple’s iCEO purchased SoundJam MP, powerful digital encoding software and immediately set to work on the app. As a result, In Jan. 9 2001, iTunes 1 debuted as a music player. Although 27500 copies were downloaded in the first week, it lacked the ability to burn a CD on an external drive.

Consequently, In Oct. 23 2001 iTunes 2 was released with new features such as MP3 CD burning, a 10-band equalizer and cross fading. In addition, Apple iPod now came bundled with this new version of iTunes that allowed it to seamlessly integrate with the songs and playlists stored on our Macs. Statistics Show that in just 18 months since its inception, some 14 million copies had been downloaded.

While iTunes 3 came with few dramatic changes, iTunes 4 added a new member to the sidebar: Music store. A first of its kind shopping experience that blew the roof off the industry and turned a thorn into a rose, the iTunes Music store brought 200000 high quality songs from BGM, EMI, SONY Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner under one fully searchable, completely legal roof. Album artwork, one-click purchasing, in-apps video and a mostly unrestrictive DMR for $1 a track. A million tracks were sold in the first week; four months later it surpassed 10 million. In fact, with 28 month upgrade path version 4 stayed on desktop longer than any other iTunes release, gaining a slew of new features before retiring.

On the contrary, iTunes 5 failed to make an impact and was rather criticized by many. Incidentally, iTunes 6 was released in Oct. 12 2005, just 35 days after iTunes 5. iTunes 6 bought serious changes to the store adding online gift options, customer reviews, “just for you” recommendations and some 2000 music videos and Pixar...