Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 5, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, company chief Howard Stringer is planning to launch his own video download portal. After Sony recently closed its own music service Connect, the group now wants to enter the video market and, according to insider circles, sell TV series and films as downloads similar to Apple’s iTunes.
Sony’s existing hardware will probably serve as the basis for the video service. Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable as well as the HD TV sets are intended to be compatible with the video offerings and form the basis for film and series downloads. However, Sony has not yet made an official statement on the plans. Apple currently also does not want to comment on the new competitor. “With over five million songs, 550 TV series and more than 500 feature films, iTunes offers the world’s largest selection. So far, 50 million TV series and over two million feature films have been sold – that makes iTunes the world’s most popular online store for videos,” was the unsurprising response from Georg Albrecht, press spokesman for Apple Germany, to pressetext. Apple did not want to comment on how it deals with competitors and how the company is handling the fact that more and more media groups are trying to resist iTunes’ market dominance.
For Sony, the introduction of its own video portal represents an important challenge after the company failed in the field of music downloads. Sony’s Walkman music players remained well behind market leader iPod after the Japanese group failed to release corresponding download software. In addition, the video business could help boost sales of the PS3 and PSP. In the USA, Sony has already launched the first versions of Internet-capable TV sets this year, which are also due to be introduced in Japan shortly. The planned download service would be the ideal addition that had been missing until now.
Apple is also pursuing a similar strategy with its TV box called AppleTV. It allows Internet content to be transferred to the television. However, according to analysts, sales in this area were rather moderate. And although iTunes is the clear market leader in the video download business and has recorded strong growth since its launch in October 2005, sales had recently gradually tailed off.
