Amazon with 99-cent TV rentals, following Apple

6th September, 2010 by adina
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Amazon has revealed that it would offer 99-cent VOD rentals and that Apple’s 99-cent iTunes TV rentals were not an exclusive. Amazon has Fox and ABC to provide shows, but its ability of rivaling iTunes is mixed. Amazon’s video on demand can play on the web and also on set-top boxes such as the TiVo. Only some shows are in high definition, while Apple promises 720-pixel definition for its files. Amazon has also said that the price of 99 cents was for ownership and not for rental, although its video content was still stream-only on many set-top boxes.

Amazon has been one of the strongest competitors of Apple in recent years. Apple has directly attacked the core business of Amazon only in April, when launching the iPad and the iBookstore. Amazon has been the main competitor to iTunes through Amazon MP3 and with Amazon VOD later. Jeff Bezos, chief of Amazon, has said that the Kindle was in another category and was focused more on reading. However, he was concerned as potential hardware sales would be lost as many buyers opted out of acquiring Kindles in favor of iPads.


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