UK set top firm Pace said in an interim statement this week that revenues and deliveries are tracking plan and that average selling prices are increasing in the second half of 2009 due to a greater proportion of high definition PVRs in the product mix. Operating margin for the full year is expected to increase slightly over the first half. During the period Pace announced HD contract wins with UPC, Viasat, Brazil’s NET Servi’os and new customer Sky in Germany.
The Chinese smartphone market grew 30% increase year over year said US researcher In-Stat this week, with smartphones accounting for 15.3% of total mobile phone shipments in China last year, up from 12% in 2007.
‘Mobile Internet applications, GPS, and multimedia functionality were the most important drivers,’ says In-Stat and Symbian retained its leading position and saw a small share increase in 2008 and a drop in Linux smartphone sales.
According to Broadband TV News, Polish Mobile TV is being tipped to take off fast by the president of NFI Magna Polonia, the national investment bank behind Info TV FM, which won the mobile TV contract there. The rationale it uses is that it will cost less than in other parts of Europe, between €2 and €4 a month. At Faultline we have always pegged uptake in line with Pay TV services, which is very low in Poland and thought the country would be forced to offer it free to air. Paid, even at that price, will mean uptake is slow in our opinion.
In the midst of a tug of war over its ownership, OpenTV (see separate story in this issue) has launched a beta testing program for its new Software Development Kit, the OpenTV SDK Development Suite C2.2. The program will allow developers to have early access to OpenTV’s new SDK from this month so they can create applications for interactive television using all the latest functionality of an OpenTV enabled set-top box. The new SDK will be released to the public at no cost in March 2010.
Telefonica implemented more Grass Valley encoders, this time theVibe EM2000, at its IPTV headend in Spain. The improved compression on this platform means that more people will be able to get IPTV services, over longer loop lengths, the company said. Grass Valley provided the original headend for Telefonica’s IPTV service back in 2006.
TVbythenumbers.com reports that for the first three days that broadcast TV programs are on the internet they will show just as many adverts as when they are shown on TV. Suddenly from 3 to 5 adverts an hour on services like Hulu, there will be more like 30 per hour. Nielsen audience measurement includes all views up to three days after a program has aired, so this will translate directly into money from existing advertisers. Of course that many adverts may also may turn internet viewers off in droves and turn them back to ‘ piracy. The adverts will start appearing next summer, it says.
Apple this week introduced new Apple TV 3.0 software with a redesigned main menu and a version which allows iTunes Extras and iTunes LP to show in fullscreen, plus the ability to listen to Genius Mixes and Internet radio, through your home theatre system. The new Apple TV software is available immediately free of charge to existing Apple TV owners, and the Apple TV with 160GB capacity is available for just $229 (which somehow converts to £219 in the UK).
Cisco will acquire a Chinese set top maker from DVN, a market and technology leader in digital cable in China. Cisco will pay up to $44.5 million for the set-top box business with $17.5 million paid upfront, and an additional maximum amount of $27 million to be paid over four years based on the achievement of specific sales milestones. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of calendar year 2010 subject to standard closing conditions, DVN shareholder approval and regulatory approvals.
US researcher Strategy Analytics says that global mobile handset shipments fell 4% year-over-year in Q3, down to 291 million units. The decline was slower than the previous quarter, as the market edged toward recovery and it believes that the handset business will return to positive growth in the fourth quarter. Samsung shipped 60.2 million handsets and captured a record 21% in Q3 in second place behind Nokia which shipped just 108.5 million devices.
Insyde Software in Taiwan is developing a new kind of App Store on Android, but this one is for Netbooks based on Android, not handsets. Earlier this month, Acer released a version of its ‘Aspire One’ netbook with a dual-boot configuration supporting both Microsoft Windows and Android. Android provides the instant-on environment for quick
access to the internet, and will run the many applications that can be
downloaded from the Market. It’s expected that other notebook and netbook makers will offer Android-based products as well.