98% Japanese Music Downloads Are To Mobiles

One interesting statistic I read today was that in Japan 98% of the music download market is to mobile devices, with PC's only taking the remaining 2%.

The report by the Recording Industry Association of Japan said that 108.9 million downloads to mobiles took place last year in the country, making the market worth 13.6bn yen.

This runs contrary to the situation in the West where mobile downloads are still rare in comparision to those by PC.

It will be interesting to see how the future pans out in the UK. Devices are converging, and it won't be much longer before the phone is the dominant music device. The iTunes phone launched today and it does seem to be the way forward. Apple have already come back with the iPod Nano, a lovely bit of hardware, but like all hardware, it will be obsolete in a few years time.