Apple recently expanded their offerings in 42 countries by adding movies to iTunes. Earlier in December, they added movie offerings in 56 more markets, only a handful of which offered them immediately. Those countries included Turkey, India, Russia, and Indonesia.
This recent movie rollout is limited, with some markets offering small movie catalogs of films exclusively from Disney or Sony. These markets don’t include high-definition movies or movie rentals. The following is the list of markets (via: AppleInisder) that now offer movies:
Europe: Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine.
Africa, the Middle East and India: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Botswana, Cape Verde, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, India, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Swaziland, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Asia Pacific: Indonesia, Micronesia, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
Latin America and the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad, and Tobago.
The iTunes movie upgrade is going worldwide and I predict that list will grow in the near future. I also predict that their limited movie collections will grow over time. Digital entertainment has grown substantially in the last few years. Consumers are less apt to purchase DVDs or Blu-ray discs when they can download or rent the same content on their tablet or television instead.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s foray into the movie market hasn’t been groundbreaking, especially given the fact they’ve got a lot of competition from Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and Google Play. But this latest expansion could give Apple and iTunes that much-needed edge to compete globally. I predict that over time, we’ll see more from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in terms of movies and entertainment. I think that if Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) could work with some large movie and television studios to offer a premium streaming service, like Netflix or Amazon, they might just dominate the mobile entertainment market.
