If anyone thinks that Netflix as a force is going to go away or run out of steam, they should look at its latest quarter figures, when business appears to be polarizing towards the company. It now has almost 14 million subscribers, up 35% year over year, after it added 1.7 million net new subs, compared to 920,000 last year and 1.16 million in the immediate past quarter. The key was that gross additions were 3.5 million compared to 2.4 million last year and 2.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. This drove revenues of $493.7 million for the quarter up 25% and net income of $32.3 million up 44%. It’s stock has now doubled in the past three months.
DisplaySearch says that spending on manufacturing equipment to make LCD panels will surge from a recession-induced low of $7 billion in 2009 to a peak of $13.2 billion in 2010. This is driven by high factory utilization among LCD producers in Korea, Taiwan and China, forcing them to expand capacity
Aspiro subsidiary Rubberduck Media Lab, a specialist in providing of streaming mobile TV services, said it planned to major on HTTP streaming going forwards and has completed its first phase to provide a new HTTP streaming infrastructure. This is the protocol preferred by Apple for its iPhone and iPad devices. Until now Rubberduck has supported iPhone streaming using a proprietary video player which converted the stream.
US video chip designer Zoran had quarterly revenues of $90.5 million, down slightly from its $93.3 million last quarter but up significantly from the $68.5 million it did a year ago. It had a net loss of $4 million compared to a net loss last years of $21.1 million. The company has high hopes for its Frame-Rate-Conversion chips and said digital camera revenues grew 16% sequentially and 137% over last year. DVD business is gaining momentum and there is a recovery in Printer Imaging. It points to design wins in internet connected TVs and DLNA connectivity, for new revenues streams.
Sony Corporation of America appears confusingly to be entering the LTE equipment space, or at least that’s how we first read the release that said it was going into business with IP Wireless, which has been the chief flagwaver for TD-CDMA. IP Wireless was briefly acquired by NextWave before buying itself back and is a key contributor to the IMB mobile TV standard. The new partnership with Sony could help the UK firm achieve the prominence it has always sought in the development of LTE technologies and they will work together on R&D for “4G and beyond.” The work will be based at IPWireless’ technology center in Chippenham in western England, where engineers will collaborate on “key new technologies to enhance and expand the potential of LTE,” said IPWireless in a statement. But don’t expect Sony branded LTE base stations, we think they mean researching media experiences across LTE networks, like video.
South Africa’s DStv, the subsidiary of Multichoice, itself part of the diversified Naspers Group, said this week it will launch Digital Video Broadcast over IP in South Africa ‘ effectively IPTV. It expects to deploy it in Johannesburg’s Soccer City in its suites and control room. The system will support SD and HD TV, surround sound, multiple languages, EPG, central PIN management and parental controls. It will also offer an interactive portal and commercial establishments such as hotels, stadiums and office complexes can tailor-make the portal to suit their requirements.
VoD specialist SeaChange International this week sold its shareholding in Casa Systems, a US cable equipment supplier for $34 million, having paid just under $9 million for it in 2005. Commenting on the sale, Bill Styslinger, SeaChange CEO and Chairman, said, ‘We invested in Casa five years ago to help accelerate the development of cost-effective, marketable solutions that enable IP streaming over cable’. Now that IPTV is a reality, it is the right time for us to sell our shares.’
Broadcom reported revenue this week at a record $1.46 billion up 8.9% over the immediate last quarter and a colossal 71.3% over this time last year. Net income was $210 million up from the immediate last quarter when it was $59 million, and way ahead of the net loss of $92 million a year ago. An investor conference call is going on as we write this, so there’s no breakdown of which products did went well as yet.
Google has bought a casual games developer called LabPixies, which is known to write for the iGoogle home page service, as well as for mobile platforms. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Google has worked with LabPixies on a variety of projects, including the launch of a number of OpenSocial-based gadgets. The company’s casual game titles include “Flood-It,” which is available across iGoogle, iPhone and Android platforms.
Soon to be Google owned, Admob, this week broke out figures on the Android community within its March 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report. It said there were 34 Android devices from 12 manufacturers available to consumers and that 11 devices accounted for 96% of Android data traffic, up from two devices in September 2009. The Motorola Droid came out on top with 32% of Android traffic and Motorola and HTC the leading Android device manufacturers with 44% and 43% of the traffic respectively. The Google Nexus One drove only 2% of Android traffic. Three devices ‘ the iPhone 3GS (39%), second generation iPod touch (25%) and iPhone 3G (20%) ‘ generated 84% of total iPhone OS traffic.
According to Telecom Paper Verizon will enhance its Fios TV service with YouTube and internet radio additions. Verizon already has internet video capabilities and is adding YouTube to the list of internet resources and FiOS customers will be able to search and view any YouTube content. It will also provide access to hundreds of stations of internet radio.
Verizon reported its quarterly results with total revenues up just 1.2% to 26.9 billion and net income down 29% to $2 .3 billion. It added just 185,000 new FiOS internet customers and 168,000 FiOS TV customers bringing the totals to 3.6 million FiOS Internet customers and 3 million TV customers. The FiOS base gave a 12.3% ARPU rise from a year ago and produced broadband and video revenues of $1.7 billion, up 22% from last year. FiOS TV penetration is now 25.2%, with the product available for sale to 12.0 million premises.