Apple has announced a new service that will allow customers to download films from the iTunes website on the same day they are released on DVD.

The service will be the first large-scale offering to sell new-release films via download, and will potentially precipitate a wider shift in the movie industry towards embracing digital distribution of content.

Apple said that from this week, US visitors to its iTunes store will be able to buy new release films for $14.99, and library titles for $9.99.

The offering is backed by most of the major studios including 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, and will sit alongside the iTunes movie rental service that Apple announced in January.

To date the majority of video download services have been focused on TV series as well as "library" titles, with only some studios, such as Disney, having offered new-release titles. Studios have been reluctant to support "download to own" services, which they see as competing with DVD sales — a mainstay of their revenues.

The announcement comes just three months after Apple announced a service which enables US customers to rent new release films from iTunes for $3.99 — also as a result of deals with the major studios. So there is no film download service — either to rent or own — for iTunes customers in the UK.

A variety of services already offer "films to own" via download to UK customers, but the majority have a limited catalogue, mostly populated by older titles, and charge a relatively high price.

LoveFiLM, which is best known for renting DVDs via the post, offers 1,221 films via download, with some, such as Shaun of the Dead, costing as much as £17.99. Sky and BT also have film download "stores", as does Microsoft, which rents films that can be watched via its Xbox games console for about £3.

The move by Apple into the film download business will put significant pressure on these and other competitors, including Amazon, analysts said, because of the immense power of the tie-up with its iPod devices, most of which now play video content.

Arash Amel, an analyst at Screen Digest, said: "The trend in movie downloads is that people are willing to pay if the service is connected to a device that they have paid for, for instance an iPod or an Xbox."

"If you're a download service without that device, then you're essentially looking at inhabiting a 'digital ghetto' where you're never going to capture more than 10 per cent of the market."

Apple also appears to have convinced the studios to embrace digital means of distributing their content — even though film downloads are likely to compete directly with regular DVD sales, which make up a sizeable chunk of movie industry revenues.

Adam Baum, a media analyst at Gartner, said: "It's always dangerous to undermine a profitable channel; generally you want change to be incremental, and not cannibalise your existing business."

"On the other hand, this is ultimately cheaper for the studios, who will get rid of a lot of manufacturing and distribution costs, and they won't have to share such a large slice of the pie with retailers."

Mr Baum said that another worry for the studios was that Apple might become too powerful. The record industry has in private been hugely critical of the deals that it was forced to strike with Apple in order to make its music available for download on iTunes.

One theory is that the studios may have been more willing to strike deals with Apple because they see the traditional DVD market as gradually being replaced by high definition (HD) Blu-ray discs, and would therefore have seen digital distribution of non-HD content as less of a threat.

iTunes customers can pay a $1 premium to rent HD films from the site, but so far they cannot buy HD films, Apple said.

Screen Digest predicts that the UK film download market — which includes rental and download to own — will grow from £4.4 million this year to £50.7 million by 2012.

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