Since the advent of the MP3 player and digital music, online digital downloads has become a thriving business. Instat, a market researcher, has just released a report showing that sales of digital downloads has now topped $3.05 Billion, which shows an increase of 49 percent from 2006.

Online digital downloads now account for a staggering 10% of all music sales, which is an increase from just 6% in 2007. Projections from Instat say that digital music sales will account for 40% of the market’s music sales in 2012.

It’s Apple who are expected to be the big winner in all of this as they’re grabbing the majority of the sales. Apple’s iTunes has only been running for 5 years and has already sold over 4 billion tunes, which represents a mammoth 70% of all online music sales worldwide. Even with the market becoming more competitive thanks to Walmart, Amazon and Tesco joining the fray, Apple is still expected to hold onto more than 25% of all digital music sales before iTunes reaches the 10 year mark.

It’s not like iTunes is struggling for coverage either. An estimated 30% of all computers in the world have the application installed.

As music downloads increase, you can expect Apple to be at the forefront of the technology, carving themselves an ever increasing piece of the pie.