We put out a simple little report about iPods and iTunes based on credit card transactions and publicly stated Apple data. And for those who aren't Forrester clients, I blogged the highlighs. In case you are wondering, we ran the report by Apple, and they declined to comment.

Since then:

• The New York Times ran a little fairly balanced pieced on the research. This got us on the media's radar screen. Then . . .
• A UK outfit called The Register and Bloomberg decided to dive in and highlight one finding of the report — that iTunes sales had dropped in the first six months of this year. We got treated to wonderful headlines about iTunes sales "collapsing" and "dropping" and "plummeting" and so on. Now for the record, iTunes sales are not collapsing. Our credit card transaction data shows a real drop between the January post-holiday peak and the rest of the year, but with the number of transactions we counted it's simply not possible to draw this conclusion . . . as we pointed out in the report. But that point was just too subtle to get into these articles.
• Apple's stock actually did plummet — 3%.

Apple hasn't said word one about tens of thousands of people using the term "podcast," despite Apple's "iPod" trademark and its claim on "Pod" as a portable audio player trademark as well. Apple took action against Podcast Ready because the firm, formerly known as Infostructure Solutions, was attempting to trademark the terms "Podcast Ready" and "MyPodder." That would mean that other companies who wanted to use the term "podcast ready" would have to license it from Infostructure Solutions, even though the term is obviously and admittedly based on Apple's "iPod" trademark. Apple cannot allow companies to register a variant on "myPod" as a trademark if it's defending its own "iPod" trademark.