AOL turns to Amazon for video downloads

By Ed Oswald | Published December 3, 2007, 2:01 PM

After apparently sluggish sales at its own homegrown store, AOL has decided to end its own video download service and outsource it to Amazon's Unbox.

Although financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, both sites would split revenues from videos sold through AOL, the companies said. AOL's own service lasted for about one year.

Data from Compete.com indicates that the overall AOL video site only managed to pull a 6% market share as recently as February of this year. From this it could be deduced that AOL likely had a very small audience to begin with, and on top of that an even smaller audience actually willing to pay for videos.

Overall, video downloads have been a tough business to make any money on as past efforts have shown. Google recently did away with its own premium video service in favor of promoting YouTube, and the only company so far to have any success has been iTunes.

Since the inception of the video store, Apple has managed to sell some 100 million TV shows and over two million movies. Even so, it still makes up a fairly small portion of iTunes revenue overall.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

I will never download DRMed Video again! And no one should buy from AOL and Amazon DRMed video see here: http://msmvps.com/blogs/...s-off-the-internet.aspx

Score: 0

|

A real beta process at work: Mozilla fires up Firefox 3.6 Beta 2

In the clearest sign yet that public input really does help the development process, a flurry of bug detections provoked Mozilla to release Beta 2 of the next Firefox.

Kindle for PC opens in beta, underwhelms

Amazon has opened the beta of Kindle for PC, a companion to the Kindle, but little else.

European ministers approve watered-down 'neutral net' language

The latest provision in the EU's telecoms regulatory framework would let businesses cancel individuals' Internet access, if they go to court first.

Snow Leopard and Windows 7 still can't crack the netbook problem

Apple has killed Atom support in OS X 10.6.2 and Windows 7 Starter Edition is stripped of "basic" functionality.

Bing gets geekier with new Wolfram Alpha integration

Microsoft's Bing is now teamed up with Wolfram Alpha for computational search results.

Universities reject Kindle DX as a textbook replacement

Two universities running Kindle DX pilot programs have rejected the device.

New EU telecoms framework mandates user consent before getting cookies

Do you want a cookie? No. Do you want a cookie? No. Do you want a cookie? No. Do you want...Are you annoyed yet? That's a preview of 2011.

The Samsung Intrepid: A nice phone, if you can accept Windows Mobile

Samsung appears to have built solid enough hardware, but it's the software that seems uncomfortable and unintuitive.

It's the US vs. the EU over Oracle+Sun and the meaning of 'open source'

Now that the EU is a virtual country, the US Justice Dept. is taking a stand in favor of its view -- and against the EC's -- that MySQL will survive under Oracle.

Microsoft's Top 3 advances in Exchange Server 2010

The latest round of changes launched today will impact how admins deliver services to e-mail recipients, and how much companies will pay along the way.

Qualcomm: $1.3 billion Samsung licensing deal unrelated to fair trade violations

Samsung has come to a 15-year licensing deal with Qualcomm over 3G and 4G wireless technology.