Apple may have trouble selling movie downloads

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 28 June 2006 05:09

Your IT - Home IT

A new poll indicates that most internet consumers are not interested in buying movies online - or at least not paying US$9.99 for a movie through iTunes as proposed by Apple Computer.

The question posed in the iTWire online poll was simply: "Would you pay $9.99 for a movie download?" While the response sample of just under 300 was quite small, an overwhelming majority of 80.6% answered no, while just 19.4% answered yes.

Apple CEO Steven Jobs, who has a close association with Disney because of its acquisition of Pixar, has been lobbying Hollywood to get on board his vision of selling movies through iTunes for the single-tier price of $9.99. Apple's success in getting music companies to reluctantly accept Jobs' 99c per music track pricing is serving as a model for the push into movie downloads.

Like music companies, movie companies are resisting the idea of one price fits all movie downloads. However, the movie companies may have a better case for protecting their turf. They need to maintain their relationships with cinema chains, the value lifecycle for movies is different than music, the quality of movie downloads is questionable and the movie watching public generally do not buy movies to keep.