TUESDAY, JAN 1, 2008, (News Locale) -  Apple and News Corporation are likely to join hands soon to offer the latest movies produced by Twentieth Century Fox on rental on Apple’s iTunes, according to media reports.  

Although neither of the companies has confirmed the report yet, sources said that the two are very close to making an announcement in this regard. And if the rumors come true, Apple’s iTunes will soon pose a stiff competition to Amazon’s Unbox!

The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal confirmed that a deal between these companies was likely in their respective online editions.

The sources further revealed that while several movie producing companies are in talks with Apple to offer their movies on rental on iTunes, Twentieth Century Fox has already finalized the deal, the details of which is likely to be made public shortly. It is rumored the deal will be announced January 14 at the Macworld conference.

The move will certainly be detrimental to Unbox’s cause and now analysts are working out what impact such a deal could have on other similar businesses like Netflix, MovieLink and Blockbuster Online.

According to the deal between iPod manufacturer Apple and Twentieth Century Fox proprietor News Corporation will enable consumers to download digital copies of the latest movies from Fox DVDs on iTunes for a specific rental.

Once the movies are downloaded on the iTunes platform, the consumers will be able to watch them for a specific period of time. Although Apple has been keen to arrive at agreements with different Hollywood studios in this regard for quite some time, there has been little response from the latter so far as they have been apprehensive regarding the pricing and privacy of their movies.

Although the there is no details regarding the deal between Apple and News Corporation on the pricing structure and whether all new releases will be available to rent, sources said that the charges are likely to be competitive owing to Apple’s competition with Amazon that sells movies at very low prices.

It may be mentioned here that Amazon’s Unbox offers the consumers movies, television shows and other videos from as many as 30 different studios and networks.

Nevertheless, the agreement would enable Apple to enhance its video market as the sales of videos on iTunes did not increase at the same rate as the site's music downloads. Even Apple TV that has been developed to play digital content from a Mac OS X or Windows computer on to an improved -definition TV too has not been impressive so far.

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