AMERICA: Online shoppers with new iPods and iTunes gift cards overwhelmed Apple's iTunes music store over Christmas.

AMERICA: Online shoppers with new iPods and iTunes gift cards overwhelmed Apple's iTunes music store over Christmas.

It led to error messages and delays of at least 20 minutes for downloads of a single song.

"Traffic was so great it blew up the site," said Gene Munster, of financial analysts Piper Jaffray.

Frazzled users began posting urgent help messages on Apple's technical forum for iTunes.

They complained they were either not allowed into the store or were told the system could not process their request to download songs and videos.

It was not clear how many people were affected by the slowdowns and California-based Apple would not comment on what caused the slowdown and whether it had been fixed.

Analysts said the problems were most likely the result of too many people with Christmas iPods and iTunes gift cards trying to access the site at once.

Four times as many people visited the iTunes website on Christmas than at the same time last year, said online market researcher Hitwise.

Some financial analysts said the interruption could be viewed as a sign that sales dramatically exceeded Apple's own forecasts.

But they added they did not anticipate a rash of iPod returns because of the delays.

Apple commands 75% of the market for downloaded music, but could lose as much as 5% of that market share in 2007 because of competition from rival services.