Apple may have enough experience with selling movies now that they realize the music market is very different from the movie market. A lot of people want to own music to listen to it over and over again over the years, but far less want to own movies. Watching it once and moving on seems to be good enough for most people.
So Apple’s model of selling movies for $10 and up may leave a considerable chunk of the market on the table. That explains why they are now apparently negotiating with major studios for rights to rent movies via iTunes as well.
The new service may be coming this Fall, and will cost $2.99 for a 30-day rental.
This is also good news for Apple TV users, who will be able to download new movies and watch them on their living room televisions. The day when we can all simply abandon our cable TV subscriptions is coming; I plan to do it at the end of 2007.
By the way, this isn’t the first time rumors about rental movies on iTunes surfaced. See our post from a year ago on the same topic. It isn’t a sure thing until Steve Jobs gets up on a stage and announces it.
Many other services already support movie rentals. See our roundup post from late 2006 for details.