LimeWire Now Found on One-Third of All PCs Worldwide

File-sharing application LimeWire is now found on more than one-third of all PCs worldwide, according to research jointly published by Digital Music News and BigChampagne. The companies surveyed more than 1.5 million systems for this report.

LimeWire continues to be the iTunes of P2P by a wide margin ... but growth has remained flat over the last several months

(PRWEB) December 13, 2007 -- More than one-third of all PCs worldwide now have LimeWire installed, according to data jointly released by Digital Music News and media tracking specialist BigChampagne. The discovery is part of a steady ascent for LimeWire, easily the front-running P2P application and the target of a multi-year Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawsuit. For the third quarter of this year, LimeWire was found on 36.4% of all PCs, a figure gleaned from a global canvass of roughly 1.66 million desktops.

The installation share is impressive, and unrivaled. But growth has actually been modest over the past year. LimeWire enjoyed a penetration level of 34.1% at the same point last year, a difference of merely 2.3%.

"LimeWire continues to be the iTunes of P2P by a wide margin ... but growth has remained flat over the last several months," said Richard Menta, research analyst at Digital Music News.

The report closely follows a legal defeat for LimeWire owner Lime Group LLC, which alleged anticompetitive, collusive behavior amongst major labels. But that challenge was thrown out by a federal court, shifting the attention back towards a massive infringement suit being spearheaded by the RIAA. For consumers, the legal volleys are mostly background noise, and more users than ever are relying on the application to acquire freebie downloads.

The complete Digital Media Desktop Application report - which covers thousands of ecommerce, jukebox, BitTorrent, P2P and other applications - can be purchased at http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/invoice/desktop_q32007

PC Pitstop collected the data required for this report though voluntary systems scans.

About Digital Music News
Digital Music News is a targeted news and information authority for music industry professionals worldwide. The Digital Music News Daily Snapshot is delivered every business morning to thousands of executives, and was founded by Paul Resnikoff in 2003. Its research group was started in 2007. The company is based in Los Angeles, CA.

About BigChampagne
BigChampagne Online Media Measurement is the leading provider of information on popular entertainment online.

The company was founded in 2000 as a technology-driven market research firm, specializing in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, but today BigChampagne is a nexus for intelligence about media consumption. The company aggregates and analyzes information about media consumption of all types, and from a variety of sources.

BigChampagne is a privately held company, headquartered in California with offices in Beverly Hills and Atlanta, GA. BigChampagne was founded by a small group of seasoned professionals from the technology, market research, and entertainment businesses.

About PC Pitstop
PC Pitstop, LLC hosts a web site, (www.pcpitstop.com), that allows individual PC users to run their PC system through a battery of online tests and diagnostics. The primary purpose of these tests is to identify things that might help improve the performance of the PC in question. Based on the results of these tests, the service offers tips and suggestions to the user for improving PC performance or enhancing the PC experience. Literally hundreds of thousand PCs are tested each month through this service, and an aggregated total of more than 1.5 million are tested annually.

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