Coming soon to a Mac or PC near you: Movies on iTunes. My BusinessWeek colleague Ron Grover has exclusive details about how how Wal-Mart, as the largest seller of DVDs -- it sells about 40% of DVDs produced -- is unhappy at the prospect of Hollywood studios doing business with Apple and iTunes. But here's the best part, and a detail you won't see anywhere else: The announcement is expected by mid-September, with prices of $14.99 for new releases and $9.99 for older movies.
I would have to guess is that there would have to be a new hardware product to go with such an announcement too, wouldn't you? Grover says says a "wider screen" iPod is on the way as well.
So unhappy is Wal-Mart at the prospect of all this that its demanding lower wholesale prices on DVDs, and Wal-Mart exec David Porter has been "playing the heavy" with Hollywood execs. Additionally, he wants marketing help when Wal-Mart launches its own movie download site later on. Wal-Mart's leverage certainly makes these Hollywood execs nervous.
Naturally this has studio execs spooked, and is irritating Steve Jobs, Grover reports. Jobs has apparently done some lobbying of his own around Hollywood, and is said to have personally called Wal-Mart honcho H. Lee Scott to express concerns. Wal-Mart also happens to sell an awful lot of iPods and Macs.
So are the movies going to have DMA protection on them also? Sure, it's not hard to get around, but if I'm buying it I don't want to have a bunch of problems making a back-up copy of it. I'm sure it won't be that hard, but Apple and the MPAA will make sure to include some sort of protection.
No comments:
Post a Comment