The iTunes Music Store proved Steve Jobs right, in demonstrating demand for legal video downloads that have now topped a million in number.
While the figures for the new video iPod won’t be available for a while, Apple has flipped about $2 million in video sales via iTunes. The company disclosed in a press release that it had sold more than a million videos in a short span of time.
“Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads,” Steve Jobs said in the announcement. “Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods.”
Music videos from U2 and Coldplay, programs like Lost’ from ABC and That’s So Raven’ from Disney, and movie shorts from Pixar were among the content that helped power robust sales on iTunes.
Videos sell for $1.99 each, though they vary in length. A U2 video clocks in at under four minutes, while an episode of Lost’ goes 22 minutes without commercials. Users aren’t complaining about prices; there are many who don’t feel real thrilled about the low resolution of the videos, which have been made to fill a small iPod screen and not a massive Apple Cinema display.
That treatment acts as a simple way to minimize the effect of file trading. Putting through a video that looks great on a 20-inch screen would be far too tempting to pirates who would gleefully find a way around the encoding and upload it to the Internet.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
