said Tuesday morning that it has launched a video-streaming plan for
subscribers to its Prime service — in direct competition with
Amazon said it will allow subscribers to its Prime
service the ability to stream unlimited, commercial-free movies and TV
shows. The company said more than 5,000 titles are available through
the service.
Prime customers pay
access to free, two-day shipping on most orders from the online retail
giant. The video streaming service will be available free of additional
charge to these subscribers, Amazon said.
While Amazon has allows customers to buy and
download movies and TV shows, this is the company’s first entry into
the subscription streaming space. As such, it may mean more competition
for Netflix, which currently leads the market for both mail-order DVD
rentals and streaming-only subscription plans.
“Amazon’s intentions are definitely clear — they want into this space,” said
Bagga noted, however, that Amazon will be hard pressed to match
has an advantage in that it has geared its service to be more about
discovering unknown movies rather than focusing on popular new releases.
“
is not so much about renting the top videos, it’s about discovery,
which lowers the cost for them,” said Bagga, who carries a buy rating
on the stock.
Shares of
“Competition is good for consumers and the studios, bad for
say how many titles it has available for its streaming plan, beyond a
spokesman’s description of “thousands and thousands.” Pachter of
Wedbush believes
Data released by
last week said the company served more than 200 million video streams
during the month of January, up more than 37 percent since December but
still below that of large video sites such as
boost last month when it reported that net income surged more than 50
percent in the fourth quarter — boosted by a large number of customers
signing up for its streaming-only plan.
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