Oricon today announced its exit from Japan’s PC music download market, becoming the first victim among local players to the surging popularity of iTunes, reports Reuters. “Oricon, best known as a publisher of music hit charts, will instead post links from its Web site to online music stores and concentrate on music downloads for mobile phones, which are far more popular than PC-based downloads in Japan,” notes the story. “The iPod has outrun us all,” said Oricon spokesman Teruaki Hidaka in the report. “If iPod users could download music from our site, we may have waited to see if the tide turns from mobile phones to online downloads.”
