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The days of leaving the house to rent a video were declared over yesterday, when Apple announced a new online rental service with the backing of all six of Hollywood’s “major” studios.

The service will be available within the next fortnight in the United States, and probably by the end of the year in Britain.

Apple also announced that it had sold 20,000 iPhones a day, or four million in total, in the 200 days since the model was introduced. But this was not enough to impress Wall Street, which bid down Apple’s share price by about 5 per cent yesterday morning.

Apple’s move into video rentals, if successful, is likely to change fundamentally the economics of the film industry, and provoke yet more arguments over the way internet royalties are paid to writers, currently the cause of an 11-week-old strike in the US that has crippled TV and movie production.

Although other online movie rental services exist, none has Apple’s huge influence over consumers. Films will be priced at $3.99 for new releases and $2.99 for “library” titles, with the price going up by $1 if the films are ordered in high-definition quality. Prices for Britain were not announced.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, said during his annual keynote speech at the Macworld conference in San Francisco yesterday: “I think it’s a revolution.” The speech is unofficially known as the “Stevenote” and features pounding rock music, bomb-sniffing dogs, a huge media presence, and queues that go outside the glass-walled building and around the block.

It is followed obsessively by technology fans and Wall Street investors alike. After last year’s surprise news of the iPhone, many were left disappointed at the lack of a similar announcement yesterday, although Apple also unveiled the world’s thinnest notebook computer — at 0.16 inches thick, it can fit into an envelope. But the biggest announcement of the Stevenote was the movie rental service, to be offered via iTunes, along with an upgraded version of the company’s slow-selling Apple TV device, a box that sits under the living room TV and hooks up to the internet.

Using the new Apple TV box, viewers will be able to order and watch films from their sofa, as well as watching YouTube videos and photo albums, without having to use a computer. In the US, Apple has lowered the price of the Apple TV box from $299 to $229 in an effort to promote its new features.

Apple promises that the movie download time will be so fast, viewers will be able to watch rented titles within 30 seconds of ordering them, although critics questioned whether home wi-fi networks would be fast enough for such a service.

Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, joined Mr Jobs on stage to lend support. “When Steve came to us with this idea, it was just a no-brainer,” he said. “This will be a transformative version of the video rental business model.”

Mr Jobs also announced yesterday that Apple sold five million copies of Leopard, the latest version of its operating system, in its first 90 days on the market.

Updates for the iPhone, including a new maps service that finds the user’s location, were also announced. “The iPhone is not standing still. We keep on making it better and better,” Mr Jobs said.

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