Verizon and Coinstar/Redbox announced on Monday a joint venture LLC company that’ll bring a subscription video service to Verizon customers. Verizon will own a 65 percent stake in the venture and Redbox will hold the remaining 35 percent. Details on the agreement were sparse, but the pair did say the joint venture will mix both online and mobile content with Redbox’s popular kiosk rental service. The mobile video service will launch sometime in the second half of 2012.
Undoubtedly, this move will bring Redbox into closer competition with Netflix and heat up the relatively untapped mobile video market. Redbox has a long ways to go if it wants to topple Netflix, though. The popular DVD-by-mail rental company launched an online service several years ago which has performed very well. So well that some claim Netflix grabs almost 25% of North American web traffic on any given day. Netflix also brought its streaming service to mobile devices via apps for the major platforms like Android and iOS. Market share numbers are not yet available, but each app has been downloaded millions of times.
[Via Coinstar; image from Shutterstock]