A little controversy can do wonders for a company. Today streaming media leader RealNetworks, Inc. announced a record-breaking month for downloads of its RealPlayer utility.
More than 3.5 million consumers downloaded all versions of RealPlayer in the month of July, the company reported, doubling the number of RealPlayer downloads from the same period last year.
RealNetworks said this new adoption rate pushes the total number of RealPlayer registered users to more than 28 million.
In July RealNetworks CEO Robert Glaser claimed before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Microsoft’s Windows Media Player “broke” his company’s media player product.
Microsoft responded to those charges today with a demonstration of its own suggesting that the problem was due to a bug, not the company’s software.
“This surge in downloads is evidence of consumers’ desire for the highest quality audio and video programming available on the Internet today,” said Glaser today in a statement. “The RealPlayer G2 has been the most enthusiastically adopted player that we’ve released to date.”
“Daily viewership of RealChannels has more than tripled since the beta
release of RealPlayer G2, demonstrating consumers’ wide acceptance of
convenient, one-button access to the most popular audio and video content on the Web,” Glaser added.