Continuing to plod steadily along a steady but very slow growth path, UltraViolet announced Monday that it has surpassed 20 million user accounts.
The digital locker service, managed by an industry coalition called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem and launched in late 2011, has also gathered licenses to 14,500 movies and TV shows from 13 content suppliers, and now counts as retail partners Walmart's Vudu, Target Ticket, CinemaNow, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) FiOS, Tesco's Blinkbox and Warner Bros.' Flixter.
UltraViolet has 17 retail partners overall, and has now infiltrated much of Europe, with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg being its latest conquest.
The slow development of this home entertainment initiative is partly due to the fact that it lacks a major studio constituency--five of the six majors have been signed on since the beginning, but Disney has not participated.
Entry into the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) mobile device universe has also been a major issue for UltraViolet.
Still, the new benchmarks come just a little over a week following the release of NPD Group data showing that 44 percent of polled consumers have heard about UltraViolet, a 9 percent uptick over 2013. NPD also found that 91 percent of users are happy with the service.
For more:
- read this Deadline Hollywood story
- read this NPD Group report
Related links:
Rumor mill: Amazon in talks to join Ultraviolet, threatening Apple's online content lead
Where Redbox Instant went wrong
Bewkes: UltraViolet accounts jumped 65 percent in 2013
Top 3 online video up-and-comers: HitBliss, Target Ticket and VEVO