If there is one thing that technology analysts agree on, it is that despite the explosion of video cellphones, hand-held game devices, laptops of all stripes, consumers still and will continue to prefer their television for watching video of more than a few minutes. Who wants to watch a two-hour movie on a 2.5-inch screen, currently the largest available on an iPod?."If anybody could pull this off with movies, it has to be Apple," said Tim Bajarin, president of technology research and consulting firm Creative Strategies Inc.Īpple's key to success is the creation of an easy-to-use "ecosystem," Bajarin says, that lets users find, buy and listen to music on a cool-looking device with just a couple of clicks.īut if Apple is to extend that success to motion pictures, the Cupertino, Calif., company faces a number of hurdles not present when it entered the digital music market: Five years from now, will one-fifth - or more - of Americans buy their movies from Apple? Selling full-length movies over the Web has been an industry grail for half a decade - the profit margins would be high, as there are no manufacturing costs - but the effort has been thwarted by slow Internet connections, software glitches, studio concerns about piracy, a limited library of films and a collective yawn from consumers, who remain perfectly happy to drive to Blockbuster or open an envelope from Netflix containing an easy-to-use DVD at an affordable rental price.įive years ago, only a few executives and designers inside Apple had heard of an iPod. Financial analysts expect the films to cost from $9.99 to $14.99 each. and Lionsgate Films for play on iPods, computers and perhaps televisions. The company has cloaked the event in secrecy, but a number of Hollywood sources have confirmed that Apple will begin selling movies from the Walt Disney Co. Today Apple plans to debut an online store for movies. Now, Apple founder Steve Jobs may try to revolutionize another industry: motion pictures. In the five years since the iPod's rollout, Apple has locked down the online music business. Consumers have filled their iPods with more than 1 billion songs from Apple's Internet music store, where tunes go for 99 cents each. One in five Americans has owned one of Apple Computer Inc.'s sleek little iPods. It is not a stretch to say that the iPod changed, and helped save, the music business.
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