NPD: iTunes Dominates Movie, TV Show Sellthrough

23 Apr, 2013 By: Erik Gruenwedel

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Apple’s iTunes Store remains the top-selling platform for movies and TV shows — despite the emergence of players such as Best Buy’s CinemaNow, Walmart’s Vudu, Amazon Instant Video and Microsoft’s Xbox Video, among others, according to new data from The NPD Group.

The iTunes platform, which celebrates its 10th anniversary April 28, represented 67% of the episodic TV show sellthrough market — significantly ahead of runner-up Xbox Video with 14% market share. Apple also dominated digital movie sales with 65% market share, compared with 10% for Amazon Instant Video and Xbox Video, respectively.

In movie sales, iTunes generated 45% of unit sales, compared with 18% by Amazon Instant Video, 15% via Vudu, 14% through Xbox Video and 8% for other platforms.

NPD said about 80% of iTunes video customers said their shopping experience was excellent or very good, 75% were pleased with the level of current releases and 73% praised the selection.

“We've seen big-name entertainment retailers lose share, and even close, as their customer satisfaction metrics faded; however, that's clearly not the case with iTunes. Customers are quite happy with the store,” Russ Crupnick, SVP of industry analysis at NPD, said in a statement.

Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD said 58% of consumers who rented a movie from iTunes in March also bought a music download in the prior three months.

The statistics are based on data from nearly 314,000 digital transactions between January 2012 and January 2013. Additional information comes from NPD's spring 2013 "Entertainment Trends in America" report. Data represents the U.S. population of Internet users age 13 and older.

“Apple has successfully leveraged its first-mover advantage of iTunes, iOS and the popularity of iPhone and iPad to dominate the digital sale and rental markets for movies and music,” Crupnick said. “While worthy competitors have come along, no other retailer has so thoroughly dominated its core entertainment product categories for so long.”

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