Having Gartner call this a ‘good result’ to me seems a gross under-valuation of what is really happening. I got the impression that the tiny number of videos on the iTunes video store when it opened last month suggested a big uncertainty in Apples mind about how the market would respond. The article iTunes customers lap up video points out that in less than 20 days over 1 million videos have been legally downloaded, and sure as expected probably 20 times that (portable screen specific videos) are moving around peer-to-peer networks destined for iPods and PSPs in the same time. Steve Jobs though simply gets back to business
Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods,” he said in a statement.
If Apple can close a few more video distribution deals quickly (as it did with music) we could really be at the beginning of a portable video revolution. See my last post on the topic which goes into some more detail about this specific transformation. One thing that is left hanging of course and what I would be very interested in is the clincher argument – how many of these videos are being watched on computers, how many are actually consumed on the move and how many are used frequently on both? Anyone out there able to throw light on that?
Posted by Gary Hayes ©2005
