Sirius XM is back to growing ways again, adding 257,000 net new subscribers during the fourth quarter, ending with 18.8 million subscribers. CEO Mel Karmazin said that, ‘Based on preliminary financial data, we expect to report over $100 million of free cash flow for 2009, an extraordinary improvement over the pro forma negative free cash flow of $552 million that the company experienced in 2008.’
Netflix says that it has a full set of the major gaming consoles now, which it can deliver its online service to, adding the Nintendo Wii, to go with its deals on Xbox 360 and PlayStation. The internet video streaming from Netflix will be on the Wii this Spring, the company said. Microsoft was the first to announce such a deal, which was touted as exclusive in 2008, but was then followed by a Sony deal a year later.
Motorola said it had launched a Google Android phone called the Motoroi in Korea this week, the first there to run Android 2.0. It will be distributed by SK Telecom. The Motoroi comes with a 3.7 inch capacitive touchscreen, WVGA (480 x 854) display, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Google Talk, an 8 megapixel camera and an HDMI output to a TV set.
Sirius XM Radio has had a study carried out by Arbitron on its radio subscribers, which it says shows that its listener base is far larger than previously realized. The Arbitron’s study showed that more than 35 million total adult listeners tune in to Sirius XM, 32 million of which are weekly listeners. The company only has 18.8 million live devices out there. Respondents said that the percent of total time spent listening to audio in general is 62% to Sirius XM, 16% to AM/FM, 4% to streaming internet, and 10% of the time using mobile devices.
US researcher DisplaySearch says that although demand for TFT LCD optical films is expected to grow from 543 million square meters in 2009 to 606 million square meters in 2010, due to price erosion, revenues will stay flat at $9.1 billion. However growing interest in green LCD TV panels and LED backlights are driving new backlight designs to add more prism films, reflective polarizers or micro-lens films.
Liberty Global executives this week said that its UPC cable subsidiary is looking to bring the TV Everywhere concept to Europe and will roll it out in early 2011 with a new design of set-top box. The company also said that Europe was not yet ready for 3D TV, but UPC would be first to market when it was, and is experimenting in some markets in co-operation with Samsung.
The European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) market researcher said that flat screen TV sales in Europe will break records this year with 50.2 million flat screen TVs expected to be sold in the EU during 2010, up 6% over the previous year. The UK will move to 10.5 million sets; Germany to 8.2 million and France to 6.9 million sets.
US Consumers will spend $6.2 billion this year in mobile application stores says IT researcher the Gartner Group, which also says that advertising revenue of $0.6 billion will accompany these applications. Mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads this year, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users. Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores at 21.6 billion by 2013 with free downloads accounting for 87% of downloads by then. Download revenue will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013 says Gartner.
According to Broadband TV News, a study by GfK Polonia shows that 75% of people in the DVB-H trial in Poland would be happy to pay the equivalent of €2.47 a month for a TV subscription. The average daily viewing times was around 107 minutes, way above previous trials and existing mobile TV services and most people used the phones at home, a common finding in most mobile TV trials.
News Corp has been saying for a while that it planned to increase its ownership in German pay-TV provider Sky Deutschland and it has now done so, up from just under 40% to over 45% via a Sky Deutschland rights share, which cost it €110 million. The money has gone into the company which will use it to strengthen marketing and sales, and to expand its HD offer.
The US Dish Network and Swiss conditional access specialist Nagravision, have extended their long term agreement with a new ten year deal, under which they customize Nagra for their own use in the US. Dish has just installed the latest version itself among its 14 million subscribers.