Motorola creating mobile movie store?

Motorola is developing a movie store for its phones, claims UK trade magazine New Media Age (registration required for full article). An alleged source at partner studio Paramount says that Motorola is in the "late stages" of offering a service that would offer full-length movies pre-formatted for Motorola's more media-friendly devices. Paramount is currently the only studio known to be involved, though others are allegedly in talks to add their own catalogs.

The service is labeled as a "breakthrough," but would offer virtually the same means of loading media as for the iPhone; rather than download videos directly to the phone, users first download videos through the computer and sideload (transfer) the content to the phone through sync software.

The report doesn't indicate whether Motorola will offer movies for rent or purchase and mentions no pricing. However, a launch is due as soon as late May and may be timed closely with a promo deal in the UK later this month that sees the Moto Z10 preloaded with all three Bourne movies.

With the exception of Apple, most cellphone manufacturers have approached movies more tentatively and have often preferred movie tie-ins such as the Z10 deal. Nokia has bundled some of its Nseries smartphones with storage set aside for a specific movie, such as the N95 8GB Spider-Man 3 Edition.

Filed under: iPhone, industry
Other story tags: Nokia, Motorola, N95 8GB, Paramount