Apple claims to have sold more than 800,000 songs in Europe in the first week of the European iTunes music stores, with more than 450,000 downloads being sold in the UK alone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that makes the iTMS "Europe's top online music store", with sales "16 times as many as OD2, its closest competitor".
To put this in perspective, record industry body the BPI announced total digital music sales in the UK, between January and the end of May, for all vendors, of 500,000 tracks. Looks like Jobs' claim in our interview last week - that the download business was not yet developed in the UK - was spot on. Such sales also imply, even at this early stage, that Apple will move on to take as dominant a market share here as it already enjoys in the US.
