No More TV Rentals From iTunes, But Is Something Better Coming?

Apple’s TV rental experiment that gave customers hit TV shows for as little as 99 cents each has been cancelled, after Apple found that “iTunes customers have shown they overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows.”

Apple TV rentals no more

For around 12 months users of iTunes and Apple TV have been able to rent or buy TV shows, but the rental option never took off with customers preference being to own the show. The option let viewers watch an episode for 99 cents for a 48 hour period.

The Apple move comes just days after the shock announcement that Steve Jobs was stepping down as CEO, to be replaced by Tim Cook.

The rental deal never really got going as only a couple of TV networks, Fox and ABC signed up to the deal but no other big names joined up. Leaving the selection available limited. Although the rental market is good, that is for movies rather than shows which could cost between $1.99 to $2.99.

The idea to grab customers with a low price point and help promote Apple TV also never really worked.

So it seems on the face of it that Apple have admitted defeat in the market, with the rental model not taking off for customers or TV studios. Hulu and Netflix rather have the market covered in a low monthly rental for unlimited viewings.

But Apple have plenty more irons in the fire, from their own connected HDTV due in 2012 and their new iTunes in the Cloud service. It could well be that Apple will be working on new methods of delivery and technology that give customers what they want from the cloud via a low priced iTunes TV subscription service.

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Steve Sanger

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