100 Million Reasons to Envy Apple

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So this is what ubiquity feels like. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announces that it has moved 100 million iPods since the media player's initial launch nearly six years ago, and all we can do is yawn.

Apple is everywhere these days, and a lot of that is the byproduct of the runaway success of the iPod. It's not just the player, accessories, and "I Love Steve Jobs" bumper stickers, of course. The Apple iTunes digital download store has delivered more than 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows, and 1.3 million full-length movies.

That's what happens when you command more than 70% of the market in a booming category. Smaller players such as SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK), Creative (Nasdaq: CREAF), and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) may be hungry, but they are pretty much fighting one another for scraps at this point.

Digital music service providers such as Napster (Nasdaq: NAPS) and RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) are doing their best with their "all you can eat" subscription models, yet Apple is doing just fine serving up Beyonce and Fall Out Boy tracks off the a la carte menu.

A lot can happen on the road to the next 100 million iPods, but the one thing we do know is that investors have enjoyed the ride. Apple shares have soared nearly tenfold since the first generation iPods rolled out in the fall of 2001. Now that is a real hit record.

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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz thinks that an Apple a day will help keep the short sellers away. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.