Apple's dominance over the music-download industry might be giving the iPod maker some troubles when it comes to moving into the movie-download market . The issue? Hollywood studios are frightened by Apple's dominance.

The movie studios are afraid they will face the same troubles that record studios are facing. See, in the music industry, sales for individual music tracks may be at an all time high, especially since Apple promotes single song downloads on iTunes. But because of that, album sales are going down, and album sales are where labels get their profit from.

So if Apple does for movies what they're doing for videos, then only the better known movies will be downloaded and paid for. The lesser known or less popular films won't stand a chance. You could say that's what marketing and advertising is for but, the truth is, word of mouth on the "intarweb" is faster than any Hollywood hype/spin/marketing plan.

To keep in touch with the program while protecting their interests, major studios have now signed a string of deals to kick-start movie downloading in an attempt to ensure that the market shares are spread around. For example, BSkyB allows you to download movies for free from them via subscription instead of per movie.

Apple still has the major advantage though, as its portable devices still dominate, and all the larger iPods already have video capability. Given the market penetration of their handhelds and the temptation to just sign up with Apple's service, Apple is likely to gain a significant share of the emerging movie download market.