At a press conference today, Apple Computer is expected to announce some sort of movie download service, like the one introduced by Amazon.com last week. However, says Paul R. La Monica of
CNNMoney.com, the hardware maker will hope the reaction for its movie service is more positive than the "collective yawn" Amazon received from analysts for its Unbox. The comments "Too little too
early," "a little too far ahead of its time," and "not really out of the box" were some of the reactions from analysts. Amazon's Unbox came to market with a limited offering of movies that cannot be
burned to DVD, and cost about the same as buying or renting a DVD. Online movie services already abound on the Web, and there's not much variation among them besides different licensing deals with
movie studios. AOL, Amazon, CinemaNow and Movielink are just a few examples, but their offerings haven't been compelling enough for consumers. What will Apple bring to the table? A partnership with
Walt Disney, but anyone else? The company's announcement is definitely movie-related; the press invite shows an Apple logo in spotlights that says, "It's Showtime." But Apple will have to offer more
than just movies on iPods and computer screens to get people jazzed. However, the bigness of the event suggests that Apple must have something else up its corporate sleeve--possibly a hardware
announcement, too.
Read the whole story at CNNMoney.com »
