iTunes for Windows announced

From MacRumors’ live coverage of Apple’s music event today, they are reporting that Apple has announced iTunes for Windows. Steve Jobs said that Apple current has 70% of the downloaded music market, and have raised the bar on the number of downloads they expect.

Now, we are clearly the market leader here. We set some goals. We wanted to sell 1 million in the first 6 months, but sold 1 million in the first week. Reset goal to 10 milllion in 6 months, but reached it in 4 months. Now… want to sell 100 million songs in a year – by April 2004.

To get there, they’ve announced an exclusive deal with AOL that will put iTunes links all over the AOL music site. They’ve also got a big Superbowl promotion going with Pepsi, where 1 in 3 Pepsi bottles is a winner of a free iTunes song.

Apple’s marketing fu is staggering. This launch really makes the original launches of Pressplay and MusicNet look like the jokes that they were.

Apple also announced new iPod peripherals: digicam storage and a microphone. These do not particularly excite me… but you can tell from the event that these were not the big announcement. Apple is expecting big things from iTunes for Windows… $100 million in first year revenue from songs, plus mega sales of iPods to follow.