The New York Times reports on the continued expansion and success of Redbox, which rents DVDs from in-store kiosks for $1 per night. “In 2005, Redboxes were in 600 locations and rented 24,000 movies a week,” the Times writes. “Today, they’re in more than 15,600 locations, renting 7.5 million movies weekly, Redbox says, not far below the 10 million-plus weekly rentals claimed by Netflix.” Redbox is in 3,000 US McDonald’s locations, as well as in selected stores run by Walmart, Walgreens, Albertsons and Circle-K.
The suggestion is that Redbox is successfully taking advantage of an economic that favors low price rentals, and that many customers still are willing to go out to rent movies, as opposed to download them onto their computers.
The suggestion is that Redbox is successfully taking advantage of an economic that favors low price rentals, and that many customers still are willing to go out to rent movies, as opposed to download them onto their computers.
- KC's View:
- I still think that Redbox is a retail concept with an expiration date. We don't know what it is yet, and in fact it could be more than a decade off…and these could be very profitable years for the company. But it is inevitable that downloading eventually could take over.
