Online Movie Downloads – Very Bright Future?
Screen Digest predicts that online revenue from movie downloads in the United States and Western Europe will reach about $1.3 billion in 2011. $720 million of which will be generated in the United States and $572 million in Western Europe. Most of this amount will be garnered by the studios and content owners. Service and solution providers would be fighting over a minor share.
Indian players Rajsrhi.com, BigFlicks.com and a host of other sites catering to the pretty large population of NRI’s (Non-Residential Indians) would also be in the race to gain their share in the pie.
As far generating revenue from online downloads and viewing in India is concerned – it will take at least another decade for that to happen. A basic concept like PPV (Pay-Per-View) is still an alien term to most of the Indians. But one never knows – online movie viewing might suddenly take up in India, especially since Broadband penetration is on the rise and even with a 3% internet penetration – our online population stands around the 30-40 million figure.
But it looks like only those with a very strong infra and hardware base would be able to handle to cost of such a service and thus, be likely to succeed. Why so? Let’s look at what has happened in the DVD market. New movies are now readily available for below the cost of Rs 50. This figure includes the cost of purchasing the distribution license of the movie, cost of DVD & DVD burning, marketing, distribution and a host of other overhead costs. Companies like Moser Baer would be looking at generating profits out of bulk sales. This makes survival a very difficult task for small players. Add to this – Rampant piracy, prevalent both online as well as offline.
Rapidshare and Megaupload – both lie in the Top 20 most visited sites in India (Alexa). These are primarily used for download purposes, thought currently mostly for Porn. But their mere presence in the list proves that a massive amount of downloading does happen in India. Now whether this same junta will actually pay for downloading quality content – waits to be seen.
Well the report by Screen Digest also suggests that the penetration of online digital movies will be about 3 percent of all movie home entertainment by 2011. AlphaMarketer notes that this a lot smaller number than some of the expectations thought by industry observers. Even so, 3 percent is not an insignificant number, and this will help create much needed new revenues to replace the declining DVD growth in the United States.
Related Posts:
The Future of the Online DVD Rental Market in IndiaBigFlicks.com launches in download movie mode. To add DVD Rentals and pump in 100M$!
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I wonder why you ignored China?
Well the post was basically about Movie Downloads in the US and Western Europe. Well here are Chinese figures for you
China:
Population – 1,317,431,495
Internet Users – 162,000,000
Penetration – 12.3 %
and here are some stats for Japan:
Population – 128,646,345
Internet Users – 86,300,000
Penetration – 67.1%