Apple Sells 100 Million iPods

In a press release yesterday, Apple announced that they have sold their 100 millionth iPod. According to TGDaily, this calculates out to one iPod sold every 1.7 seconds since the product was launched in 2001. In this 5.5 year period there have been 10 different versions of the player. What is amazing to me is sales have continued to accelerate with Apple announcing the 90 million sale mark in March. 10 million in one month? Incredible!

In the same announcement Apple says there have been 2.5 billion tracks downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. The iTunes Store was launched in April of 2003. Let's see, April 2003 was 4 years ago..... let's do some math....

(4 years)*(365 days/year) = 1,460 days

(2.5x10⁹ tracks)/(1460 days) = 1,712,329 tracks per day

(1,712,329 tracks per day)/(24 hours/day) = 71,347 tracks per hour

(71,347 tracks per hour)/(60 minutes per hour) = 1,189 tracks per minute

(1,189 tracks per minute)/(60 seconds per minute) = 19.8 tracks per second

You may also recall Apple announced in January of this year they had hit the 2 billion track mark with iTunes. So...... they've served half a billion tracks in 3 months! I'll skip the math for the last 4 months - you can do it if you want!

I keep reminding myself we are living in in a significantly historical period of time. The rate of change in the way we work, communicate, entertain and (most importantly for us as educators) learn is mind boggling. It does not appear to be slowing down.

I look back and wonder what used to do without my iPod...... I'm sure our students do too.