Apple ran a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today on Monday celebrating its 100 millionth iPod sale.
WSJ (paid sub. req.) has the details and some perspective on this achievment:
Consumers have embraced the iPod, which went on sale in November 2001, far more quickly than they did Sony Corp.’s Walkman, the pioneering cassette player and headphones introduced in 1979 that changed how people listened to music. It took Sony about 14 years to sell 100 million Walkman devices. Apple of Cupertino, Calif., reached the same milestone in just over a third of the same time.
Apple executives said they had little inkling of how well the iPod would do when the company released the product. “There’s no way anybody could have ever guessed,” said Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod product marketing at Apple.
The company also said its iTunes Store, designed as a close companion to the iPod, has sold over 2.5 billion songs, 50 million television shows and 1.3 million movies.