It’s not exactly a major step forward for movies-over-the-Internet, but two struggling online film distributors, Akimbo and Movielink, announced yesterday that Movielink will distribute some of its Hollywood films over Akimbo’s set-top based service. Akimbo also announced that it has partnered with Thomson to manufacture a co-branded $199 (after mail-in rebate) Akimbo player.
To date neither Akimbo nor Movielink, which is owned by a coalition of Hollywood studios, have made much of a dent in the video-over-Internet market. Movielink, which the studios shopped around this year in an effort to jettison its once-promising effort to pioneer legitimate film distribution over the web, hasn’t caught fire because, first, consumers aren’t that willing to watch full-length movies on their PCs and secondly, Movielink is only available for viewing on the PC — no distribution to hand-held devices or TV sets. It doesn’t help that Movielink’s line-up grows weaker over time and that the service costs $10/month.
Akimbo suffers from a double-whammy: the upfront cost barrier of the box needed to view Akimbo’s offerings and content that is very limited in its appeal. Most of Akimbo’s content falls into the extreme niche category (Korean soap operas, second-tier cartoons, obscure DIY and so forth).
The San Jose Mercury News, however, ran a piece today that played the pairing as a real competitive breakthrough. My favorite quote from the article:
`”It’s a big step for us,’” said Jim Funk, Akimbo’s vice president of marketing. `”A lot of people have asked us, ‘When can we get the latest movies?’ Now we can offer the latest movies — and Turkish television.”
My second favorite quote from the article:
“It will expand the number of choices for consumers,” he [Forrester Analyst Josh Bernoff] said. “And it will put more pressure on the cable operators.”
Um, something tells me that the alliance between Akimbo and Movielink will barely register on cable’s radar screen.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:21 PM|Comments(0)
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