Mobile operators yield less than 5% of digital music sales

Mobile operators now account for just 4.9 percent of digital music sales in the U.S., down from 6.6 percent in 2008, according to music industry trade publication Billboard. Based on 2009 sales and market share data, Apple's iTunes digital storefront now generates 26.7 percent of all U.S. music sales, up from 21.4 percent in 2008 and far outpacing second-place Wal-Mart, which slipped from 15 percent in 2008 to 12.5 percent ago. Among mobile firms placing in the top 20 of all U.S. music retailers, Verizon Wireless led the way with a 2.21 percent market share, off from 2.30 percent in 2008--Sprint is next at 0.86 percent, down from 1.25 percent, followed by T-Mobile (0.79 percent, down from 1.28 percent), mobile content provider Zed (0.60 percent, down from 0.68 percent) and AT&T (0.48 percent, down from 1.04 percent). Billboard blames the drop on declining ringtone downloads as well as shrinking ringtone prices.

Among other retailers making gains in 2009, Amazon.com (including its Amazon MP3 effort) now accounts for 7.07 percent of sales, up from 4.93 percent in 2008, while RealNetworks represents 1.23 percent of sales, up from 1.21 percent.

Earlier this year, Apple announced consumers have now downloaded more than 10 billion songs from iTunes since the store launched about seven years ago. The iTunes Store reached the 5 billion download milestone in June 2008.

For more on the status of the digital music market:
- read this Billboard article

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