Amazon.com added FOX movie and TV titles through its Prime Membership platform today in a deal that will roughly double the number of available titles to 11,000 by this Fall.
The announcement comes two days before Amazon is expected to launch one of two Kindle tablets to compete with the iPad.
Currently, the iPad has a lock on the tablet marketplace with apps like Netflix, Crackle, and Hulu+. When, or if, Amazon launches a tablet on September 28, that primacy may be challenged. Amazon will have a whole new channel open for Prime subscribers, who pay $79 per year for streaming content.
A new tablet also opens up channels for the 100,000 non-Prime titles Amazon already has in its queues.
We expect that the device will provide network channels to all sorts of content beyond movies and TV, and that it will run an Android system skinned to the Kindle theme. It should dramatically lower the entry cost for users of a tablet to around $250.
FOX titles available to Prime members will include contemporary movies such as, “Speed,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Doctor Dolittle,” “Last of the Mohicans,” as well as classics like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” FOX will also stream TV series including “24,” “The X-Files,” “NYPD Blue,” “Arrested Development” and “The Wonder Years.”
