France’s largest retailer, the Carrefour Group has announced that they will be launching a movie download service that will allow customers to buy or rent movies and TV episodes.
The Group operates supermarkets and grocery stores around Europe that carry DVDs but wants to “expand its focus on entertainment, bringing it closer to customers.”
Carrefour’s international non-food chief, Christophe Geoffroy, said the “shopping experience would be simple and fast, with downloads taking about 3 minutes,” probably meaning that most videos could be streamed. He also noted that VOD (video on demand) market in Europe was not currently great but growth was expected. He cited analyst research which predicts “Europe’s movie download market will be worth over about 690 Euros (over $1 billion) by 2011.”
The announcement follows Tescos similar announcement last week in which they launched a music and video download site focusing on MP3 albums.
Result for: supermarket
According to the latest data from GFK Chart-Track, sales of the Microsoft Xbox 360 console have risen 32 percent over the last 4 days after the company announced a price cut on the console in the UK. On the other end, sales of the Sony PlayStation 3 were down 8 percent for the same time period.
The price cut drove the price down for the Arcade model to GBP 129.99, the Premium to GBP 169.99 and the Elite to GBP 229.99, marking the lowest point yet for next-gen consoles.
“[360] sales are up 32 per cent and PlayStation 3 sales are down eight per cent,” added Chart-Track’s Chris Poole.
Poole also noted that software sales were up, citing specifically the fact that the supermarket Morrisons was selling all chart titles for half off.
“We’ve had quite a big release with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed but we’re on the back of the Morrison’s promotion so we’ve had a drop in units but a rise in value,” noted Poole.
