Apple is negotiating with Hollywood studios for deals that would let people who buy movies from the iTunes Store watch streaming versions of those movies on Apple devices such as iPads or iPhones without manually transferring them, reports “The Wall Street Journal” (http://macte.ch/k3fYa), quoting unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”
The service is expected to launch in late 2011 or early 2012. The report doesn’t mention Apple’s iCloud specifically, the publication said that Apple plans to “put movies in the cloud” to make it easier to share content across the many devices. Since iCloud launched yesterday, it seems likely that this could be the foundation for such a movie service.
Also, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told clients earlier this year that: “Apple’s iCloud service for media storage makes it simpler to own multiple Apple devices and share content among them. At first the only media iCloud will store is music and pictures, but we believe Apple may add movies and TV shows purchased or rented in iTunes to the iCloud service, which could be viewed on a TV.”
