Fresh off their recent release of the ever popular iPhone, Apple laid the smack down on the movie rental business. Apple is set to dominate the movie rental business much like they did with the digital music industry. Apple’s iPod made CD’s virtually non existent, and CEO Steve Jobs plans to do the same to DVD’s by introducing Apple’s new online movie rental service. They aren’t the first firm to enter the digital movie rental industry, but they seem to have a distinct advantage by leveraging their popular video-capable devices like the iPod and iPhone. I would also say it’s safe to assume a dramatic increase in sales with the not-so-popular Apple TV. Apple already has more than 500 movies in their database for purchase, but they see online rentals as the next emerging industry. Major movie labels such as 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony, MGM, Lionsgate, and New Line Cinema have all joined in, so it would seem as if iTunes will have a very impressive collection. As of now, the details their service is as follows:
New releases will be available 30 days after they are released on DVD and can be viewed on your computer, iPod, iPhone, or on a television with the Apple TV device. The charge for new releases will be $3.99 while older films are $2.99. Once you purchase the rental, you will have 30 days to begin watching your movie. Once you begin to view the movie, you will have 24 hours to view the movie as much as you’d like. After 24 hours the movie will erase from your iTunes. As of now about 1,000 films are available. They will also be featuring movies in HD with a starting price of $4.99.
I really like the idea of this service and think it will be very useful to many people. Being able to rent a movie instantaneously is obviously the best feature of their service. However, I feel that their might be a few flaws with Apple’s service. First of all, the price for renting movies wasn’t too appealing for me. I guess $2.99 for a standard quality movie isn’t bad, but I didn’t like the price for the HD movies. At 5 bucks a pop, renting movies could become a little pricey. If you look at netflix, you can rent an unlimited amount of movies per month for only $4.99. Depending on how avid of a movie fan you are, this might be a problem. Secondly, having only 24 hours to watch the movie is a terrible idea. Many times people will pause a movie and not be able to get back to it until the next day. This is something I believe Apple will need to change immediately. If they give you 30 days to hold onto the movie, why not a longer time to view it? So those are my thoughts on this. I believe this will be a very popular service and will continue to grow, but Apple needs to tweak some of the minor details. Looks like Apple is on their way to conquering the world.
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