Nearly 1,100 titles of rental and retail videos were released in the year 2011 on behalf of the main video distributors in Iceland. Released retail videos numbered 642 titles and rentals 421 titles. The number of released retail videos increased slightly from the previous year (see figure).

US productions are by far the most visible in the market, equally of rental and retail titles, or about some eight out of every ten titles released every year. In more recent years, the origin of released titles has become gradually more varied, especially with the increased number of European titles, and not the least domestic ones.

Rental videos
In 2011, the sale from distributors to rentals totalled 28,000 copies, or about 10,000 fewer than in the previous year. Over a decade, the number of sold copies to rentals has significantly decreased. Last year 75,000 fewer copies were sold to rentals than in 2001 when the number of sold copies reached its all-time-high with over 103,000 copies sold (see figure).

The estimated number of transactions from rentals in the 2011 was 1.2 million copies. Since 2001, the number of rental transactions has dropped by 1.9 million copies, or from some 3.1 million. Accordingly, rental transactions per capita are estimated at four in 2011 compared to 11 rented copies in 2001. Video-on-Demand is not included in these figures.

Retail videos
For a long time one of the characteristics of the Icelandic video market was the underdevelopment of the retail video market in comparison to the matured rental market. Gradually this has changed as sale of retail videos has increased in recent years at same time as there has been a marked downturn of the rental market.

In 2011, some 700,000 copies of retail videos were sold at distributor level, or about 50,000 fewer copies than in the previous year, when the sale totalled 752,000 copies. In value, the sale at the distributor level totalled 663 ISK million.

About the data
Statistics Iceland collects annually information from the main distributors of rental and retail videos. The number of transactions of rental videos and the volume of sale of retail videos at the consumer level are estimates based upon various sources, them amongst are Myndmark, a joint organization of rental video rights holders and rentals, and Screen Digest.