14 DAY TRIAL // According to Reuters, Amazon.com, the largest Internet retailer, is expected to launch a streaming video service in the weeks to come. The company plans to use the new product in order to augment its digital offerings.
Nevertheless, while speaking at The Wall Street Journal three-day conference, which was held north of San Diego, the company's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, refused to offer further details regarding the future streaming video service of Amazon.com.
Apparently, the Seattle-based company has had a rough time with its digital media offerings, as rival Apple Inc. dominates the category, thanks to its popular iTunes music download service. It seems that Amazon.com intends to revive its position in the digital media products market and to attract more customers to its online business.
This year, we've seen Amazon.com launching its own electronic book reader, dubbed Kindle. Besides that, the company has been also involved in building a digital music store. Thanks to this, it can now offer downloadable movies, television shows and videos directly from its own website.
The Internet retailer also has a working deal with TiVo Inc, manufacturer of the popular digital video recorder, which allows Amazon.com users to rent videos online from the company's Unbox service and to watch them on their televisions. All of these actions are meant to boost Amazon's position as the leading online retailer and to draw a larger paying public to their website.
Amazon.com is not the only player in the online streaming video business. Apparently, Netflix Inc, a DVD-by-mail company, is also planning to release an online streaming video service. "Once we're in streaming... we can attract well beyond 20 million subscribers worldwide," said chief executive Hastings.
With the new service, Amazon.com essentially allows users to rent movies via the Web, rather than download large files which need to be stored on a personal computer or other storage devices.