Germany: Download market grows by 45 percent

Feature films, series, documentaries - 160,000 legal downloads and streams are currently counted every month in Germany, an increase of 45% compared to the same period last year. In the summer of 2005, 110,000 monthly downloads were counted. As the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) announced in Berlin, the increase in broadband connections is not unconnected to the double-digit growth rate. Against this background, market researchers expect good business for commercial video downloads. The European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) forecasts sales of 88 million euros for 2006 and Western Europe. A growth rate of 51 percent is expected for 2007.
According to the BITKOM press release, providers are currently relying on two main business models. One can be equated to rental, the other to sale: With "pay-per-view", customers can watch the videos for a certain amount of time, usually for 24 hours. This model is the most frequently used approach. With "download-to-own", on the other hand, the user acquires the right to watch the videos an unlimited number of times.