iTunes is an extremely diverse online store, where owners of Apple products, and not only, can find music, movies, TV shows, applications, books, and much other multimedia content, all available via the Internet. iTunes is such a big store that its revenue I surpass them those of some of the largest US media companies. In fiscal year 2012, iTunes generated revenues of 8.5 billion dollars, which are 300 million dollars more than those generated by The New York Times, Simon & Schuster, Warner Bros. film studios and Time Inc. together.
By itself, Apple's iTunes (which was just updated) and App stores, which hawk everything from movies and music to books and newspaper subscriptions, make more money than The New York Times; Simon & Schuster, which publishes the best-selling "Steve Jobs" biography; Warner Bros. film studios, which owns the popular Batman film franchise; and Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the US
Combined.
Although iTunes revenues include application sales, the money collected by Apple through this platform denotes how many people use it and the interesting part is that Apple produces very little content for iTunes. Most of the content comes from third-party producers who are forced to use iTunes to put their products in front of hundreds of millions of people around the world, with Apple only receiving commissions from sales and distribution.
For Apple, iTunes is a "gold mine", but the revenues generated by this platform pale in comparison to those generated by the sales of iDevices, products that helped to increase the popularity of iTunes.
