Jobs blames studios for iTunes movie shortfall

Steve Jobs says he's "not happy" that Apple failed to deliver 1,000 movies on iTunes by the end of February. So, what happened? Seems the various movie studios are still scrambling to acquire the proper digital distribution rights for their respective movies.

Jobs made the comment on Tuesday at Apple's annual shareholders meeting, noting that there are fewer 700 movies now available on iTunes. "I'm not happy about that," Jobs said (according to the San Jose Mercury News, by way of Macrumors).

In fact, as of Wednesday morning, there are exactly 773 movies in the iTunes video store, along with a little fewer than 100 Apple TV-only HD movies (about in line with what Jobs initially promised).

But that 773 figure includes all the movies in iTunes, including those that are only available for purchase. If you go back and watch Jobs' Macworld keynote in January, he clearly made his "1,000 movies" promise during a discussion of iTunes movie rentals—and at last count, there are only 428 rentals on iTunes (according to iTunes Power Search).

Anyway, Jobs said the delay stems (as many had guessed) from the movie studios trying to secure the proper iTunes distribution rights for their various films, according to the Mercury News. Jobs added that Apple ran into the same problems after the iTunes music store first launched.

So, when will we get to the magic number of a 1,000 movies? No word on that, yet, but at the rate we're currently going—about 25 movies a week—it'll be August before we get anything close to a thousand rentals on iTunes.

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Apple shareholders want say in executive compensation [San Jose Mercury News, via Macrumors]