“Walt Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger on Tuesday said the company sold 125,000 movie downloads worth $1 million in revenue through Apple Computer Inc’s iTunes online music store in the first week Disney movies were offered,” Gina Keating reports for Reuters.
“Iger told a conference of analysts the company expects to take in $50 million in added revenue during the first year of the iTunes movie download program, which was unveiled by Apple on Sept. 12,” Keating reports.
Keating reports, “Disney last week became the first movie studio to offer movie downloads through iTunes. The company placed 75 titles, such as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl’ and ‘National Treasure,’ on the Web site.”
Keating reports, “Iger said the number of films on iTunes would increase as Disney clears the broadcast rights to move them to the Web… Iger said Disney stood to benefit from further content sales through its Apple partnership when the computer company rolls out a device, code-named iTV, in the first quarter of 2007 that allows consumers to stream movies, music, photos, podcasts and TV shows from the Web to home media systems.”
Full article here.
See Disney movies via iTunes Store here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Kevin P.” for the heads up.]
You can bet all of the other studios just took notice of this news. Just wait until Apple’s “iTV” is available.
Steve Jobs gives sneak peek of Apple’s “iTV” wireless set-top box:
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BusinessWeek: If anyone can make bridge the great divide, Apple can with ‘iTV’ – September 14, 2006
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I just went to amazon, unless I missed it, there is no mention of unbox on their home page. I need to check that again. If its true, that is the way to market!
Of course the Disney movies that I’m really interested in are Song of the South and Snow White & The Seven Dwarves.
From my recent post on a different forum
“I have Powerbook G4 1.67ghz. I bought Pirates of the Caribbean yesterday and I was able to start watching it withing 3 minutes of the sart of the download. Download took about 80 min while I was watching.
I could pause it and also rewind. It was very easy to use. I know it’s not HD but the resolution was good.”
I would love to have extras but I’m done with dvds. A decent storage shelf for my dvd’s cost as much as a backup hard drive. iTV now Steve.
The movie executives will still play a “wait -n- see” game for the next month to make sure that $1 million a week figure holds consistent. I’m confident it will and when Disney make $5 – $10 million in “extra revenue” it’s first month.. then watch the other studios come running. They all may want Walmarts business too, but an extra $10 million a month is worth pissing off Walmart.
In other news..
A memo was leaked by a Apple insider between Steve Jobs (Disney’s largest shareholder and CEO of Apple Computer) and Disney CEO Robert Iger. They were caught discussing the amount of first week Disney movie downloads that should be released to the media.
In the memo Steve Jobs felt that 125,000 would be a acceptable amount and would have Apple supplement whatever the iTunes Music Store did manage to sell so the total would come to that amount.
Steve Jobs mentioned he felt he needed to create a lure for the other media giants to join iTMS, so by artificially inflating the true number of downloads, thereby making it appear Disney would be hogging the whole show, to force the others onboard.
Robert Iger said the next week of movie downloads should be around 275,000 as Disney would provide even more movies, especially old Disney favorites that have been a proven repeat seller.
Steve concurred and said he would have the offshore servers that he personally owns start buying as negotiations between the other media outlets were undergoing.
I bought the two Coen brothers movies out of curiosity — it is a very slick system, very cool chapter system, and on my cable modem the download took less than 45 minutes!
Now if they only had HD movies, I would buy a couple terabyte hard drives…
Hey, I purchased Grosse Point Blank, not Pirates of the Caribbean. I figure I already owned Pirates on DVD. But I do have a pre-order in for Cars, cause I didn’t get to see it at the movies. I might pick up Tombstone, cause I just love Val Kilmer in that movie.
But I’m hesitant to say my movie purchases will grow, even though my music and tv purchases did. (1) Because, even though Apple’s prices are better than Amazon and others, the prices still seem too high to me.
The $9.99 is great for library films, and they do have a number that I want. But I live right down the street from a video store, who puts new DVDs on sale, as used copies within two to three weeks after they’ve hot the rental shelf. And their prices are typically $5-$15.
So for now, where Apple is taking my money left and right is TV shows—Eureka, Bones, Daily Show, etc., etc. In fact, if the Sci-Fi Channel, TNT, USA, and Showtime just released most of their shows as season packages I’d be broke right now.
I was very impressed with my puchase of “The Wild”, mainly because I WAS able to watch it (with my grandson) after one minute of downloading. Decent quality, decent price. I like it, but I am not sold on it completely. Then I think of all the scrathed DVD’s I have from years of kids use, (why didn’t they put sleeves over those things like they did floppies?) and how iTV-Whatever will help bring it all together. Get the HD going, and so will I.
Yeah, I really need a way to watch purchased TV shows on my entertainment system – I really wish I could burn one DVD to do it, I’d really prefer that. But the new box looks good.
Disney should bring out all of those movies that went into the so-called “vault.” Lion King and what not. Beauty and the Beast.
I, too, am surprised so many were sold in the first week. Perhaps it’s the novelty, perhaps it’s because – for now – it’s the only system that works!
I was able to take advantage of the free “million downloads” promotion to download the final episode of LOST. It’s almost 90 minutes in length, over 900 MB in size. It took several hours over my 800kb DSL link. The 640×480 resolution was acceptable on my destop monitor, but I missed the wide format I get with over the air high-def broadcasts.
Will Apple’s movie offerings be a long-term successful play? Maybe not like music – which for folks like me turns into an impulse buy. I don’t expect Microsoft or Amazon will be major competitors. I *do* see the satellite or cable companies getting into this in the future. If they properly leverage their existing pipeline into the living room we could see higher resolution offerings and (hopefully) lower prices.
Apple Insider is reporting that Airport Extreme Basestations are rare and that Apple is saying that more will be available in November…
Sounds like iTV might make an early appearance. Would make huge waves…
Netflix
Second Word:
Walmart DVD’s
Third:
Handbrake
Foruth:
Yard sale
So, anyone know how many movies Amazon Unbox sold during its first TWO weeks? Sold and movies… as in not counting the free download promo for TV episodes.
Lotus:
I went to amazon and without using the seach button there, started looking for Unbox. hard to find. Did they kill it?
Is unbox undeliverable?
undone?
un???
Living in Canada, I think i will see the iTunes store for Atari ST before i see movies and tv shows to download up here!
So if this iTV thing is going to use the yet-to-be-ratified “n” version of wifi for the streaming, doesn’t that mean that if you want to use it you’d need to get a new computer that also supports the “n’ version?
I bought “Pirates of the Caribbean.” It looks good. Though, I wish the movies had subtitles and DVD extras (like commentaries, behind the scenes, bloopers, etc.)
iTV cost will come down. When introducing a new product, it is common practice to price it a little high. You want to fend off unmanageable demand. Once they get production ramped up well enough and the initial demand calms down, you’ll eventually see the price drop to $99 I’ll bet. I’ll bet it drops to $99 with 14 months of its debut.
Regarding Amazon. The website is intelligently designed. It does a browser and OS check before presenting you with a page. It just doesn’t present Unbox to an OS that can’t run it. However, if you search for it you’ll find it.
Pat on e back for the right answer to UNBOX sales to date:
a) 11
b) 83
or c) 112,000,359
I want to run a movie studio and leave money on the table… Wow I think they should of signed up – now they will… It will be like free money for them.. They are fools….
I don’t think selling 125,000 movies in a week is all that impressive considering iTunes sells over a MILLION SONGS A DAY.
Video download is here to stay and in time as tech advances are made, will only get better, not only in terms of acquisition and quality, but storage as well.
Amazon is doomed I think. I believe the problems that arise out of trying to balance the interests of the studios and the consumer, by their choice of DRMs will be their undoing. Every time XP boots up, Amazon’s player launches and phones home.
When news that FairUse4WM works on movies begins to sink in, the studios are going to start waving EULA around and Amazon will be forced to play the role of bad cop.
Remember when word got around that iTunes Mini-Store was phoning home? Apple moved to fix that before it devolved into chaos. People naturally equate that stuff with spying and put it on the same level as malware. When Amazon customers realize their computer is sending information to Amazon they’ll begin to question the reality of the process and Amazon’s customer service is not prepared to deal with the backlash as evidenced by this “Caught on Tape” QT file…
<a >Don’t Call Amazon for Help!M</a>
These numbers will NOT hold up. Nobody wants to purchase movies that are the same price as DVD’s, but don’t give you any of the EXTRAS or any of the BENEFITS of DVD’s. The only reason these first week’s numbers are so high is because all the reporters & bloggers were trying out the new service to see how well it worked. Normal people won’t download movies from iTunes. These numbers will not hold up.