The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon is working on a subscription service for TV shows and movies. The company has reportedly been talking with NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp. Viacom, and others about such a service.
The offering would appear to be a direct competitor to things like Netflix, iTunes, and Hulu plus. According to the WSJ, it would focus on old catalogue content, and would work through the browser or connected devices like TVs, Blu-ray players, Xbox, etc – very much like Netflix.
Amazon already offers movies and TV episodes for download, but a subscription service could attract a different audience, and Amazon probably has the power to be a bigger threat to Netflix than some other competitors.
The battles for web television are seriously going to be heating up soon. Apple is expected to announce an update to its Apple TV offering today. Google TV will be here in the coming months. Yahoo has its Connected TV offerings. Samsung is pushing development on its platform hard right now. It’s going to be very interesting to see how things unfold in this industry. 2011 is going to be a very interesting year for television.
Netflix itself is doing all it can to expand. The company is expected to be feature on the new Apple TV offering, and it has recently launched an iPhone app, with an Android app on the way.