Apple iTunes sells 1m videos in 20 days

Video iPod hits the street running

Apple has sold more than a million videos through its iTunes music store in the first 20 days after launching the service, the company has reported.

"Selling a million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests that there is a market for legal video downloads," said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.

"Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods."

The firm added music videos and selected TV shows and short movies to the online store on 13 October. The shop sells the movies for $1.99 per download.

Content plays on the new video iPod as well as PCs or Macs running the QuickTime movie player.

Top-selling video items included music videos from Michael Jackson, Fatboy Slim and Kanye West. A short movie from Pixar, as well as episodes of Desperate Housewives and Lost, also topped the charts.

Apple's video catalogue currently holds over 2,000 titles. This limited amount of content has been cited by many analysts as a major hurdle which Apple needs to overcome if it is to become more successful in the video download business.

While Apple reached the one million video landmark in a very short period, it is too early to draw any conclusions about the demand for such content, according to Jim Nail, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

"We are still in the novelty phase, and it will be a few months before any conclusions can be drawn about the appeal of downloadable video content," he told vnunet.com.

Nail added that movie studios are using the Apple media store to test the waters in offering video content of hit television shows as an on demand service through TV set-top boxes.