Sony's Crackle Joins Video Streamers

Sony has announced that it's video player app, Crackle, has been downloaded more than 11 million times.  With plans to launch tailored apps for Windows Phone, Nook Tablets, and Kindle Fire, Sony intends to have native Crackle apps for virtually every major platform and device.

  Crackle differs from Hulu+, Netflix, and Amazon's Prime streaming services in several ways.  First, the content catalog on Crackle has fewer offerings than its competitors.  Second, the content is heavy on b-grade titles, and (naturally) Sony-owned content from Columbia and Sony studios.  Third, it doesn't offer any content in HD - at least for now.
  The real difference from a business perspective is that Crackle is 100% ad-supported - and free to users.  While Hulu has some content that's ad-supported and "free" Hulu's also subsidized by the subscription Hulu+ service.  Crackle will provide a real test for the viability of a stand-alone "free" (ad-supported) commercial online video distribution.  While Sony's been a leading innovator in new media hardware and content distribution (they had an e-reader before Amazon and a personal digital music players before Apple), they've not always been smart about it, or successful.  Their tendencies in the past have been to load up with proprietary hardware and software, and limit flexibility in how people use and access devices and content.
  Crackle can turn out to be a good test case in two ways - the viability of ad-supported content in a digital world, and whether Sony's learned that digital users really like flexibility.

Sources  -  Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go and Sony? Huh?,  MoBlog (a MediaPost Blog)
Crackle home page - http://www.crackle.com/