iTunes U Downloads Top 600 Million

iTunes may be regarded as a fun-centric platform, but it’s also about education, such as with iTunes U - a powerful distribution system for lectures, language lessons, labs, audiobooks, even films.

Described as an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students, iTunes U has had more than 600 million downloads since its debut in 2007, according to Apple.

The figures were obtained by The Loop, whose Jim Dalrymple is preparing a feature on Apple’s foray in the education sector with iTunes U.

Apple said they’ve recorded more than 300 million downloads in the last year alone, which clearly indicates that iTunes U is on a roll lately.

The service has over 1,000 universities listed with active accounts, and there are also small and big schools contributing to the program.

The report dishes out names such as Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, University of Melbourne and the University of Tokyo.

Apple also provided the blog with a breakdown of the iTunes U downloads per institution, noting that Emory University, Harrisburg Area Community College, Ludwig Maxmillians University (Germany) and Oxford University have all amassed over 10 million downloads.

Open University and Stanford University, each with more than 30 million downloads, are topping the charts.

Lying somewhere in the middle with just over 20 million downloads each are Yale University, MIT, University of California Berkeley and University of South Florida.

Some 30 percent of these downloads came from iOS devices, despite a general (misconceived) association of the service with full-fledged desktop computers.

The report also does well to justify why 60 percent of all iTunes U downloads are from outside the United States, noting that the service is available in no less than 123 countries.