Some metrics on the popularity of media players

"Podcasting is taking off and iPods are seemingly ubiquitous. Unique users of Apple's iTunes player should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with nearly 30 million users in the US alone. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers."

The thing I don't quite get though, isn't iTunes at its core just a XML wrapper for Quicktime? I mean, it's not a codec. So the rise of the popularity of iTunes as a media player, simply means the rise of Quicktime.