Apple, which revolutionised the market for portable music with its fashionable iPod player, promised last night to do the same for Hollywood studios and TV broadcasters.
Unveiling a new version of its iPod which is capable of showing movies and television, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said he hoped it would be one of its biggest-selling products ever.
"This is the best music player we have ever made," he said during an announcement in San José, California.
Mr Jobs - who has previously been sceptical about the market for portable video - also announced that new iPod owners would now be able to download videos, including TV shows such as Desperate Housewives and Lost from America's ABC network, using the company's iTunes program. He said he hoped the new device would capture the public's appetite for portable video in the same way that it had with digital music.
The new iPod - which comes in both white and black - will be able to store up to 150 hours of video and is set to retail for between £219 and £299, depending on storage capacity. Although fans are expressing mixed feelings about the muted nature of the launch - Mr Jobs said video was "a bonus" - the ability to watch film seems likely to add fresh impetus to the burgeoning online video market.
In the past Mr Jobs has said it was "not clear" whether there was demand for video devices, but the announcement has been one of the most anticipated moves in Apple's history. The company has already supported and promoted video on its desktop computers, and Mr Jobs has close links with Hollywood in his other capacity as chairman of Pixar, the animation studio behind hit films including Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
Apple clearly believes it now has the right formula, but the new iPod is far from being the first handheld video device to reach the market. Rivals, including mobile phone companies, have already created a number of devices that can show television and movies on the go, but the idea has yet to grab consumers.
Mr Jobs is hoping that Apple's stranglehold in music - achieved through a mixture of technical innovation, marketing and trend-setting designs - can translate to new areas. Critics, though, are saying that the firm could struggle without large-scale content deals with movie studios.
The announcement came as part of a range of new product announcements, including a slimmer desktop iMac, a multimedia manager called Front Row and a remote control device. This week it emerged that 6.5m iPods had been sold worldwide in the past three months.
