By Gina Keating and Michele Gershberg
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A nascent market for allowing people to download and rent movies is "wide open" for competition, a top executive at online movie rental company Netflix Inc. (NFLX.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Thursday.
Movie download rentals provide a faster way to access films than selecting them at a store or ordering from an online catalog that sends DVDs via regular mail. It is considered to be a key new growth area for rental chains as more people access entertainment over high-speed Internet connections.
"There is competition out there but it hasn't proven to be very successful. It hasn't hit the model yet that consumers respond to," Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. "The game is wide open for somebody to come in and make a play there."
Hunt said widespread adoption of online downloads hinges on consumer acceptance of download technology and on the wide availability of titles, neither of which has been met by existing services.
Using current technology available to many U.S. consumers to access the Internet, it could take hours to download a movie.
Netflix, the largest online DVD rental service with 5.7 million subscribers, has pledged to unveil its plans for online downloading of movies in late January.
Blockbuster Inc. (BBI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Chief Executive John Antioco told the Reuters Media Summit on Tuesday that the movie rental chain could offer a download service in 2007.
Hunt noted that Movielink and CinemaNow, both partly owned by movie studios, have offered what amounts to a movie download service for several years without achieving widespread adoption. Continued...
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