"Apple continues to dominate the digital music player and online music markets, despite new competitors constantly entering the market," or so says PiperJaffray's recent findings. Accordingly, Apple Computer conducts a bi-annual survey for around  six years now. That sounds like bordering on paranoia and with the sampling just comprised of 1,000 high school students, the computer company might not be getting the real picture.

Since we are here anyway, the research says that the iPod is taking much of the market share with 79%. Closest competition is Sony with a lowly 8% share. In the meantime, the study found out that almost 80% of the students are currently downloading music online, and majority of those use P2P music sharing networks.

"But of those students who use legal online music services, 91 percent said they use iTunes, which is up significantly from our spring 2006 survey," comments PiperJaffray's analyst Gene Munster. The middle market investment bank and institutional securities firm accordingly attached this growth from iTunes increasing content variety.

Apple maintains that winning the teenager sector is pivotal to the company's continued long term growth. Judging from the research firm's numbers, it seems that the Cupertino-based company will be enjoying this comfortable lead for quite some time.