AfterDawn: News

Amazon looking for a partner to rent DVDs

Online retailing giant Amazon is reported to be looking to partner with another existing online DVD rental service instead of launching its own fresh service. Amazon has apparently already approached Netflix and Blockbuster but no details on the negotiations were given. Amazon already has its own rental service in the UK which the company launched last year but no companies involved would comment on the new information.

Currently, Netflix is the market leader, consuming about 75% of the overall revenue. After rumours of Amazons plans last year, subscription prices dropped by about 20% as Netflix and Blockbuster went head to head to battle for customers. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes the company is about the break even this year and hoping to add nearly 1 million more subscribers by the end of the year.



Currently Netflix has about 3 million subscribers keeping the service alive and successful. Hastings said that Amazon would have to spend a lot of money, in the area of hundreds of millions of dollars just to catch up with Netflix. Amazon however has 47 million customer accounts and believes it can use these accounts as its base to start a new service quickly without having to spend too much money.

Source:
Betanews

Written by: James Delahunty @ 15 Apr 2005 8:57

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• 6 comments

• S2K

  hundreds of millions to catch up with netflix? not likely. amazon's brand is infinately more known and trusted.
  
  the person who wrote this is a very poor resercher and doesnt understand net retailing or dvd rental. amazon has 7 million customer accounts in the UK, it has 48 million in the US and is still growing. It is the 31st most respected brand on the planet out of millions.

  15.4.2005 16:31 #1

• Dela

  Quote:the person who wrote this is a very poor resercher and doesnt understand net retailing or dvd rental. amazon has 7 million customer accounts in the UK, it has 48 million in the US and is still growing. It is the 31st most respected brand on the planet out of millionsHey buddy im taking my news from a news source ok? Dont call me a poor researcher when the source says this:
  Quote:Amazon, however, said it believes it could used its exiting 7 million customer accounts as a base to start the new venture quickly without a large expenditure of money.So Amazon are actually the ones who made the 7 million comment. If you want to comment on my researching again, then PM me ok? but check the sources first!

  15.4.2005 17:19 #2

• rootboy

  Cutting and pasting from a news source doesn't qualify as 'writing' an article, therefore I would have to assume that S2K's comment is directed at the person who actually wrote those words.

  15.4.2005 19:58 #3

• Dela

  I didn't cut and paste it since technically they own what they write. However, any news site can re-write news and its completely legal - only we also choose to actually point out the source of where we got the news from (a lot of sites dont). This is technically the same thing that every news site does online, only most of the news comes from bigger names like reuters originally.
  
  If you read my reply to S2K, nowhere in my reply was I unfair, I'm just making sure he directs his comments to the right people, and as I said, if anyone finds anything wrong with a news story, they can PM me on the site quite easily - I love feedback, makes things much easier.
  
  But ye, like I said I didn't cut and paste from any news article, nor do I from any other news source (very little amount of sites actually cut and paste, unless they can legally).
  
  So ye, lets get back on track here and anybody replying after this post, please stay on topic which is "Amazon looking for a partner to rent DVDs".
  
  S2K - No offense is directed in your way from me, and I'm pretty sure you would realise that anyway. However, if you were adding news to a site that you think might be of interest to the users and you choose Betanews as your source and somebody makes a comment about the person who wrote the article being a very poor researcher, but does not state if they mean the source of the news, or your work - you'd also want to throw in your defense. Now if you just said that Amazon have more than 7,000,000 customer accounts, fair enough, thats a comment I agree with - but as I said I'm only going by Betanews' source.
  
  I will say though I completely agree with one part of your comment, it wouldn't take Amazon very long (or cost them hundreds of millions) to catch up with Netflix, they are a giant compaired to Netflix, but you can appreciate Netflix' comments, in business they have to talk tough ;-)
  
  Looking back over my reply btw, I do realise I kind of did take it for granted that your comments were aimed at me, so, sorry about that - I'm not going to deny a possible mistake or edit my post or anything like that. If you'd like to discuss this further, send a PM to me.
  
  rootboy - Same to you, no offense, I'm just telling you I didn't copy and paste from Betanews. But I do like to see members springing to other memebers' defense when it looks like they have been treated unfairly. Need to talk about that any further, PM me.
  
  Take Care :-)

  15.4.2005 20:55 #4

• S2K

  Dela,
  I certainly did not aim this at you personally and apologize if it seems so.
  
  I penned my comment without looking for the original story, as I deal with these numbers directly, and know them for a fact. (as part of industry work for a similar business)
  
  Now that I have found the orginal reuters piece, I can guess what happened: when synopsizing you, or a secondary source that was your source, dropped the "4" in "47".
  
  please don't take offense, my comment was not aimed at you. I wat to thank you in generally for this great site. I certainly first learned of the talks from you and afterdawn.
  
  Back to the story. I can think of quite a few reasons why amazon would prefer blockbuster. For their big partnerships they strongly favor partnering with business that have established bricks and mortar and established online sales. There are powerful reasons for this. (this is why the only big screw up in amazon's partnerships was toys r us, which had no real net presence.
  
  Netflix has only online, Hollywood only BM, and Blockbuster has both.

  16.4.2005 03:45 #5

• Dela

  S2K, thx for clearing that up :-)
  
  And yes Blockbuster did seems to me like the better option also. While I have to accept that yes, Netflix is kinda ruling the online rental service right now, I would have never heard bout them if I wasn't writing news for this site :P Whereas Blockbuster is an everyday name that you hear, and has been for quite some time.
  
  It's like saying iTunes rules over MSN Music. This is true, but Apple certainly do not rule over Mixcrosoft from a business point of view :-)

  16.4.2005 07:22 #6