Apple Inc. (AAPL): Is It About the Music, or The Apps?

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has made quite a living on its devices over the years, but much of the company’s revenue growth can go back to much of its digital content, which comes in the form of movies, TV shows, apps and music through iTunes and the Apple App Store. Digital content has been a massive growth industry for several years now, not just for Apple but for several others companies like Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).

But of the billions of dollars per year that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) takes in, where do you think the users of Apple devices like to spend more of their money – on the apps or on the music? Have you looked at your iPhone and thought about it? Have you looked at your apps and compared them to your personal iTunes music library? What do you think?

An Asymco analyst, Horace Dediu, recently broke down the digital content numbers by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and he estimated that Apple users spend more on apps than on music. And with many apps in the Apple App Store available for free – and very little if any iTunes music is that way – does that seem surprising to you?

Dediu’s analysis broke down the digital content into five categories – software, books, apps, music and video – and based on Apple’s reported revenue of about $20 million per year from digital content and listing about 575 million users (those with Apple IDs), he reasoned that an average Apple user will spend more apps in a year than on any other type of digital content. Dediu estimated that users spend about $16 per year on apps, $12 per year on music, $9 a year on software, $4 per year on video and $2 per year on books.

So all things being equal, people want their TV and their music more than a good book. Anyone find that surprising? And with the large amount of free apps out there and the lack of free music on iTunes, does the idea of an average user spending $1.33 on apps for every $1 in music surprising? What amount the amount of music purchased? Does $12 seem about right to you? Give us your thoughts on these Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) digital content estimates in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: None