• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 9, 2007

Apple is expected to soon start selling movies owned by Viacom's Paramount on the iTunes store, according to a report in today's Wall Street Journal.

The deal reportedly won't include new releases, but will encompass "older" titles, like "Mission: Impossible." Still, even without the most current movies, the addition of Paramount could give Apple's iTunes movie store a needed boost. Unlike the iTunes music store, which launched with the major record labels already on board, Apple's movie store debuted last September with only Pixar, Miramax, Touchstone and Disney--all studios owned by Walt Disney Co.

In the last several months, a host of companies have rolled out online movie stores, yet none have so far emerged as the clear market leader. Consider, late last November, BitTorrent forged deals to sell movies from Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate and Twentieth Century Fox Film, while Wal-Mart started testing digital downloads by offering customers who bought DVDs of "Superman Returns" a downloadable version for an extra few dollars. And those are in addition to online movie stores launched last year by AOL, Amazon and Microsoft (for the Xbox 360 console).

But, while choices usually are good for consumers, the myriad of options here seems to have slowed adoption. EMarketer senior analyst James Belcher recently toldOnlineMediaDaily that the wide variety of possibilities was creating confusion. "It's a hodgepodge right now," he said. "There's nothing where you go, 'Oh, this is easy. I don't have to think about this.'"

At the same time, too few choices for consumers can result in monopolies--and lawsuits. In fact, while Apple has been hugely successful with iTunes music and the iPod, the company currently faces a suit accusing it of trying to create a monopoly with its iTunes music store. Specifically, the suit complains that music sold on iTunes is formatted so it can only be transferred to iPods, and not other portable devices.