Alcatel used the Broadband World Forum in Brussels this week to launch its new advertising delivery strategy for IPTV, designed to send adverts to people which they are interested in. The system uses anonymous secure subscriber profiles which are based on service usage and demographics authorized via an ‘opt in’ process. The services uses a remote video splicer and ad insertion logic. The system also supports audience measurement and plugs into ad servers such as Microsoft’s Atlas server. Alcatel also introduced its Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture at the show.
RIM owned up this week that the costs of bringing new replacement devices to market would eat into Q3 profits, even though Q2 earnings were up 72% over last year, an announcement which made its share price fall 20%. There has been a lot of talk about the BlackBerry maker needing to spend a lot of R&D to keep up in an increasingly competitive ‘smartphone’ environment.
Apple has cut its planned production of iPhones in the second half of the year by up to 4 million units, according to calculations by investment bank Pacific Crest Securities, in a move mainly geared to sustaining current pricing levels ‘ but also perhaps indicative of lower than expected demand in certain markets, notably Japan. If these numbers are right Apple will ship 14 million to 15 million iPhones which would still make it the 7th or 8th largest handset maker.
Amino Communications’ AssetHouse has licensed its “AssetFactory” content merchandising engine to Sezmi, a Californian developer of IPTV systems which will include personalized, over the top web video, alongside traditional VoD and IPTV. AssetHouse was used to drive BT Vision’s VoD service in the UK, and Sezmi is its first customer in the US.
Video transcoder specialist Dilithium has an iPhone platform for live video and VOD using its Dilithium Content Adaptor. The DCA iPhone system is an infrastructure offering which can be deployed by operators on any one of Wi-Fi, WiMAX, 3G or HSDPA.
UK regulator Ofcom has said that leading satellite TV supplier BSkyB has what constitutes market dominance, which it calls ‘market power’ due to its control over live Soccer games for the UK league as well as control over the route to market for Hollywood films. It has decided to conduct an industry wide consultation and if the community agrees with Ofcom it will force Sky to make the content available to all other pay TV operators at lower rates. This conclusion came out of Ofcom’s annual review of the Pay TV market. However Ofcom is also saying that with adjusted pricing it might be okay for Sky to launch its Picnic digital terrestrial service, which Sky recently pulled the plug on because the Ofcom review was taking so long.
Israeli semiconductor designer Celeno Communications says it’s developed a type of Wi-Fi chip which can carry four concurrent HD streams. The chip is said to work at ten times current Wi-Fi speeds with zero packet error. The system on a chip uses its OptimizAIR technology which uses Beam Forming MIMO to increase range, and channel aware transmission shaping and scheduling to achieve HD QoS.
Content aggregator and mobile streaming specialist MobiTV has taken on rights to distribute programming from ABC’s entire mobile platform which features full-length episodes of Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Samantha Who? and Ugly Betty. MobiTV has US deals with Sprint, Alltel and AT&T and has 4 million subscribers on 350 different types of mobile devices.
Wal-Mart is getting its very own exclusive game, hot on the back of its first deal to have an exclusive album (from heavy metal band AC/DC). The deal has been cut with MTV, which will make an AC/DC version of the Rock Band video game purely for Wal-Mart to sell alongside the album. Expect more exclusives as Wal-Mart tries to stem the flow of online sales ‘ an effort that will eventually end in failure.
Sony Ericsson has laid off 2,000 people as part of a plan to align operations and resources to meet the increasingly competitive environment in cellular right now. When it brought out its Q2 financials in July Sony Ericsson said it would need to make huge cost savings of around $420 million now says this was always the likely way to find those savings.
UK satellite TV company BSkyB was very unhappy when it was told by the local finance regulator the UK Competition Commission, that it must unload most of the stock it had bought in broadcaster ITV, and so it appealed. It has now been told at appeal that it must offload even more of the stock, crystallizing a huge loss. It bought the stock to prevent rival Virgin Media buying ITV.
Nokia said this week it will acquire OZ Communications, a privately held Canadian company with 220 employees which offers instant messaging systems on handsets. This should allow Nokia handsets to talk to AOL, Gmail, ICQ, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo!