The Sony Walkman brand has always kept back some fans from turning to the dark side that is the Apple iPod, and now those fans are being rewarded by the arrival of a phenomenally high spec video Walkman. Dubbed the X-series Walkman it has wi-fi, a 3 inch OLED touch screen, which although smaller than an iPod touch, is likely to create a better images due to the extreme contrasts that OLED is capable of and it will use far less battery. The X series has advanced noise cancellation and an FM Tuner. It comes with the Slacker personal internet radio embedded and can cache Slacker when not connected to the internet. All standard and Windows codecs are supported. The device comes in two models, one with 16GB of memory at $299 in the US and £209 in the UK with 32GB $399 (£279).
Italy’s doubling of VAT to 20% has knocked a hole in Sky Italia’s numbers, driving up churn so that although it attracted 232,000 gross additions its net figure was up just 46,000. Sky Italia had an operating income of $63 million for third financial quarter against $97 million a year ago.
Microsoft is to take on debt for the first time. It has filed to offer five, 10 and 30-year senior unsecured notes. And will sell $2 billion of 2.95% notes due 2014; $1 billion of 4.20% notes due 2019, and $750 million of 5.20% notes due 2039. It’s the first time we can remember Microsoft taking on debt, which given that it has tons of money in the bank ($25 billion) seems a little odd.
Germany’s second largest cable TV operator Unitymedia has launched its very first DVR using a Samsung device with a 160 GB hard drive. Unitymedia has been steadily converting its mostly analog base to digital over the past three years, and reckons it’s ready to take the next step, but will charge for the device, rather than give it away to attract more subscribers, something which happened in the US. It will charge a monthly rental of €5 to triple play customers and €10 to basic TV subscribers.
France’s National Assembly finally voted through an amended version of the ‘three-strikes and you’re out’ ISP law which failed to get through on a previous reading. The law forces ISPs to disconnect repeat file-swappers. The law must still pass through the Senate, any day now, but is expected to pass.
Apple has turned down an application for its iPhone App Store which can remotely control downloads on the BitTorrent file-sharing network. It points out that this category of application is often used to infringe third party rights.
Cadence Design Systems has pointed out that it was instrumental in helping DiBcom create its ‘Octopus,’ mobile TV platform using multiple Cadence design tools to create a 65nm digital SoC which can support CMMB, DVB-T, DVB-H, DVB-SH, ISDB-T and T-DMB protocols. It also contributed improvements in power efficiency, including power shut-down for individual design blocks It says that the end result was a first-time-right tapeout of the chip. DiBcom announced the chip in February for delivery now.
Sony Ericsson said this week that it would partner with Zeemote, which makes a revolutionary wireless gaming controller that controls mobile multi-player held games across Bluetooth, and says it will launch a console-style mobile gaming experience in the UK on a TV connected the Sony Ericsson W705. This will be sold as an exclusive on T-Mobile, bundled with a Zeemote JS1 Bluetooth Mobile Gaming Controller and pre-loaded with the Fast & Furious Zeemote Ready game. There will be 5 additional Zeemote demo games. Just picture using your handset as a PS3.
Nokia subsidiary Navteq this week launched LocationPoint, its location-based advertising service, in Europe. LocationPoint offers location aware applications the chance to guide consumers to local nearby advertisers. Navteq has 100 million navigation lookups each day and now wants to use this in advertising.
Sony said that it plans to raise $1 billion from capital markets next month by issuing corporate bonds which many believe will be used to push working capital into troubled handset maker Sony Ericsson. Sony also said the money was in part to repay existing bonds due March 2010.
US researcher In-Stat says that there is a real dogfight brewing in the ultra mobile device (UMD) market between mobile Internet devices, ultra mobile PCs, portable entertainment devices, and smartphones. It predicts that MID & UMPC shipments will be around 19 million units by 2013, while the total market for UMDs will approach 656 million units by the same year.