Apple and Zune Site Surge

Traffic to the websites for Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's Zune has made major strides on Christmas day, according to new information published by stats tracker Hitwise. The Zune in particular saw major gains, with traffic nearly tripling at 299 percent compared to the Christmas before; the increase was also a 392 percent spike versus the 24th. Most of the visits are connected to downloading the necessary Zune software and to sign up for the Zune Social service that lets users share their music tastes online, Hitwise says.

The researchers have declined to publish the year-over-year gains for Apple but note that Apple's overall site traffic for Christmas is still several times that of Microsoft's, with 0.69 percent of all detected web traffic belonging to the iTunes site and just 0.09 percent attributed to official Zune pages. However, day-to-day traffic increased 339 percent for Apple versus Christmas Eve while the Apple Store itself climbed 169 percent. As with Microsoft's site, most of the jump between the 24th and 25th for the iTunes website is connected to new owners downloading copies of iTunes. Boosts to store traffic are unaccounted for but may relate to gift cards or late gifts.

The Zune increase shows that Microsoft has "captured interest" in its devices with this year's redesigned Zune lineup, Hitwise adds. The series includes both a revamped hard disk player (the Zune 80) as well as lower-cost Zune 4 and 8 flash-based models that have made the lineup more accessible to first-time or budget buyers. Apple's continued success with new iPod designs has also helped its results this year.

Apple was the only company producing a dedicated portable media player to be ranked in the top ten product-related searches, with the iPod and specific models appearing three times while most of the searches are dominated by consoles such as Nintendo's Wii or Sony's PSP.

by MacNN Staff