Apple and Amazon Keep Mum on Movies

If you want any indication as to how the movie download business is going, you’ll have to look elsewhere than yesterday’s earnings calls from Apple and Amazon. Though both companies are jockeying to lead us into a downloadable future, they barely touched on the topic during their respective quarterly check-ins.

Here’s what Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said about Apple’s video endeavor:

Our movie rental service has been well-received by customers and we have also just begun selling TV shows in Germany and will continue to expand video content internationally.

Amazon’s Bezos was even more elusive, saying the company was “extremely happy” with its digital initiatives, which encompass not only movies, but MP3 sales and e-books.

To be fair, the concept of downloading a movie directly to your TV is still relatively new for consumers. There isn’t a completely elegant solution yet, and it wasn’t until January that Apple got the bulk of its movie studio agreements.

As Variety writes, though movie downloads aren’t going gangbusters now, studios still expect them to grow substantially over the coming year. Once-reluctant studios are even testing releasing movie downloads on the same day the DVDs come out.

On its call, Netflix said it was “thrilled” with the progress of its streaming service and that more people were watching movies online than the company had expected.

But if you want any specifics as to who’s buying what and how much (or why so many people are buying Zoolander on iTunes), you’ll probably have to wait until this time next year.