Apple is refuting the results of a Forrester Research survey that iTunes sales are declining saying that they are “simply incorrect”, but has yet to released any financial figures to rebut Forrester Research's finding.

Alan Hely, Corporate communications director for EMEA, didn't give Pocket-lint any financial details to discredit the claim, however did say that "iTunes holds a market share of around 80% of the legal downloading market". In the US it sells around 6% of all music, whether in stores or online.

The analysts obtained figures on music downloading from iTunes from 2791 credit and debit card transactions over 27 months, between April 2004 to June 2006.

Forrester pointed out that the slump in sales at the end of that period could indicate a seasonal slump, and that figures could have changed direction afterwards.

Recent reports have pointed out that Apple sells, on average, 22 iTunes tracks for every iPod sold, and that this has increased recently from an average of 20 tunes.

Matt Phillips, Communications Director for the UK music industry's body, the BPI, says that overall, music downloads are increasing steadily. “In 2004 we were selling 14,000 downloads a week in the UK, until the two main retailers launched, which were Napster and iTunes”, he told Pocket-lint.

“iTunes then sold 400,000 in its first week. In 2004 overall, 5.8 million downloads were sold; over 26 million were sold in 2005."

“We're on course to sell over 50 million downloads in 2006.”

But until Apple releases financial figures of iTunes revenue and profit in January, it will be difficult to tell definitively if iTunes sales in particular are increasing or decreasing.

We will keep you posted.