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.
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