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Analyst: Apple could see $13B in iTunes sales in '13

Including sales in Apple's iBooks store and its App Store, iTunes could grow almost 40 percent over the next three years, an analyst predicts in an International Business Times story.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney

Lance Whitney/CNET

iTunes could put $13 billion in annual revenue into Apple's pocket in 2013, a Global Equities Research analyst predicts in a story published yesterday by the International Business Times.

Including sales in Apple's iBooks store and its App Store, iTunes could grow almost 40 percent over the next three years, said analyst Trip Chowdhry, who cited research showing that more publishers are supporting the ePub format used by iBooks versus Amazon's Kindle format.

The iPad has also provided a healthy boost to App Store sales, according to Chowdhry. The tablet's application "attach rate" has been growing steadily, reaching 45 apps today from around 15 apps six months ago.

A recent study by Horace Dediu of market researcher Asymco found that Apple spends around $1.3 billion a year to run iTunes and its App Store. Past reports, such as one issued a year ago by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, discovered that the App Store has never been a huge profit center for Apple and that the company has typically done little more than break even in it.