MacRumors has a story today about a new report from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek that speculates that Apple could be planning to launch a “new far-reaching cloud-based service” for movies. Misek believes that Apple’s humungous new data center in North Carolina will be handling the new iOS-based subscription service, which will enable iPhone/iPod touch and iPad users to pay to stream movies and other content to their devices, presumably via iTunes. Misek notes that Apple has plans to double the size of its already massive data centre, greatly expanding its server capacity, with a view to handling huge volumes of video streaming in the future. MacStories has the following quote from Misek’s report:

“We believe Apple has learned much from having Netflix on the Apple TV and we cannot help but feel Apple will try to improve on this model somehow. So how does Apple convince Hollywood and other content creators to license it? In our view, the best way to do that would be the model they use for App developers: let them take the vast majority of the revenue while you use the content to drive device sales and monetize it that way.”

Source: Analyst Speculates Apple Prepping Video Subscription Service to Challenge Netflix - Mac Rumors, MacStories

Depending on subscription fees and stream speeds this might not be a bad deal. Please let us know when/if you hear more concerning this subject. Thanks for the update.