$120m spent via iTunes Store on Christmas Day

Users treated themselves to 140m gifts of apps and music.

The bumper e-harvest  for Apple was disclosed during its 1Q financials release, and illustrates yet again the vice-like grip iTunes has on the entertainment retail space.

With the firm selling more than 50 million iOS devices in Q4, a large portion were likely handed out as Christmas presents accompanied with iTunes vouchers, which is presumably what fuelled the $120 million spend from users.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial analyst said 140 million pieces of content including apps, music and videos were downloaded from iTunes on Christmas Day alone, while iTunes revenues were up 42 per cent from the previous year.

Further results show that the in the wake of the firm's iBooks Store push last week, there has been over 600,000 downloads of the iBooks Author app. Additionally, 85 million have subscribed to iCloud since its October launch.