Aug. 19--Blockbuster Inc. announced plans Tuesday to offer downloads of more than 10,000 movies, including new releases, on some Motorola phones.

"We're at the front edge of this one," said Kevin Lewis, the Dallas-based company's senior vice president of digital entertainment.

Outside of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, and iPod and its iTunes digital movie store, Lewis said, the agreement is the first between a digital movie provider and a mobile phone maker.

Blockbuster's service doesn't require a subscription. Movies, television programs, concerts and comedy performances will rent for $1.99 to $3.99 and be sold for $7.99 and up as part of the company's OnDemand service.

Download speed will depend on the network connection, said Bruce Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of Blockbuster OnDemand. "On a fantastic connection, you can start watching in under a minute," he said.

Sometime this year, Motorola is expected to release high-end smart phones built around Google's Android operating system, and those devices have been getting some buzz in the industry.

However, Motorola spokeswoman Kathy Van Buskirk declined to say which devices would run the application and when they might be available to consumers.

Picking Motorola as a partner is a bit of an odd choice for Blockbuster. Among hard-core tech fans, Motorola is seen as a limping company that surrendered its leadership in cutting-edge phones when it failed to build on the cool, thin Razr phones it released almost five years ago.

Since then, multiple handset manufacturers have leapfrogged Motorola, and the company's market share has steadily declined. The Gartner market research firm recently reported that Motorola's global share of cellphone sales had fallen to 5.6 percent in the second quarter of 2009 from 10 percent a year earlier.

Lewis wouldn't say whether the Motorola agreement was an exclusive arrangement for mobile phones. "We're making sure everything works with Motorola," he said.

The agreement continues Blockbuster's strategy of offering digital delivery across multiple platforms, he said. In the last year, Blockbuster OnDemand has partnered with Sonic Solutions, TiVo, Samsung, Vizio and others.

"Our goal is to bring entertainment to whatever devices consumers are using," Anderson said.

More people are growing accustomed to watching digital content online and doing so anywhere and on smaller devices.

A record 157 million Americans watched 19.5 billion online videos in June, up from the 16.8 billion watched in April, according to comScore Inc., a firm that measures digital use. The average online viewer watched for nearly 7.6 hours in June, ComScore said.

"Mobile video entertainment is exploding," said Christy Wyatt, vice president of software applications at Motorola Mobile Devices. "Together with Blockbuster, we intend to deliver an unparalleled portable movie experience on our next-generation handsets."

Some tech companies are betting that consumers will be interested in connecting their portable devices to TVs to output video rather than just watching on the small screen.

Microsoft's coming Zune HD media player, for instance, will be able to output high-definition video to compatible televisions, as well as displaying the video at lower resolution on the device itself.

mhalkias@dallasnews.com; vgodinez@dallasnews.com

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