Apple iTunes has landed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and their movie catalog to the business, bringing the total movies offered through the iTunes movie site to over 500. Included with the catalog are "Rocky" and "Dances With Wolves. Movies will gradually be rolled out over the next few weeks.
Even though other big media companies aren't joining in yet, Apple iTunes (AAPL) is still the largest online movie store in the world, having sold over 2 million movies to this day.
The reason why things are moving slowly is because the big media companies aren't going to allow any one company to dominate the distribution channels.
As a result, others have made deals with competitors like Wal-Mart (WMT) and Amazon.com (AMZN) to distribute movies also. That way they can roll out their entire catalogs across a number of competitors so they aren't held hostage to any one.
We'll see a gradual unfolding of deals and partnerships among the various players in the field as time goes on. As Apple's vice president of iTunes Eddie Cue said, "We'd love to have all the movie studios, that's certainly our goal. I think it's just a matter of time."
He's right. While there are some side issues like pricing of downloads, that's really not what's the deciding issue in adopting the online distribution model. Having a number of options is the bottom line of the entire process, and is what the studios are looking for.
With that starting to take shape, we'll start to see more annoucements like this across the board.
Comment Preview