Broadcom completed its quarter with revenues of $1.82 billion, up 24% over last year, but down consecutively from last quarter’s $1.95 billion. This yielded net income of $228 million. Revenues were up $401 million in Broadcom’s Mobile and Wireless segment, while its Broadband Communications and Infrastructure segments were roughly in line with last year. It offered guidance for its June quarter of roughly flat revenue and slightly better margin. Broadband Communications includes set tops, media servers, residential gateways, home networking, TVs and Blu-ray players.
Arris says that it has supplied its ServAssure Advanced Performance Management Software to proactively manage the DOCSIS network for LiWest Kabelmedien which claims it is the second largest Austrian cable operator with 135,000 customers.
Sony has revealed that its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been hacked and it continues to keep them switched off while it investigates how it happened. They have been off now for a week and there are fears that consumer data has been stolen.
Online marketing services firm ValueClick announced this week that it has acquired Greystripe, a provider of advertising within video games, for about $70 million. San Francisco-based Greystripe said its in-game mobile ad network reaches over 30 million users.
Sony has been sadly reflecting this week on the passing of former Sony President and Chairman Norio Ohga, who died this week aged 81. It is said that Ohga gave up a career as an opera singer to join Sony in the 1950s and later led its expansion into movies and video games.
Yahoo said this week it had acquired IntoNow for between $20 million and $30 million after the company was only launched in January of this year. IntoNow is focused on social networking around favorite TV shows. Users use an iPhone or Android App which indexes all US TV shows and with a simple tap when you’re watching, it identifies the show, right down to the episode, so you can share it on Twitter or Facebook.
US researcher DisplaySearch says that its recent study into Global TV Replacement shows that in general, consumers are replacing both their flat panel and CRT TVs at a much faster rate than the previous 10-15 year averages. This isn’t really surprising because if you divide the number of TV homes in the world by the number of TVs that ship each year the result is a 7 year cycle. DisplaySearch says that digital broadcast transitions and more affordable flat panel TVs have caused consumers to replace more rapidly. Countries in emerging markets, such as India, Indonesia and China are also doing this, not just America, Europe and Japan.
US Researcher In-Stat says that networked devices in the home, such as tablets, set tops, HDTVs, smartphones, and web-enabled media players, have generated a much higher need for home networks. It says that although WiFi is dominant that 40 million non-Wifi home networking nodes shipped in 2010 including HomePlug, MoCA, and HomePNA. It says that HomePlug shipped the most of these, but MoCA had the biggest compound annual growth rate at 46%, over the 2007 through 2010 time period. It also says that China is expected to surpass the US in 2011 as the country with the most home networks. The research says that G.hn will make impressive gains in set top boxes, becoming the second most popular standard by 2013 and challenging MoCA by 2015.
Polish satellite DTH platform Cyfrowy Polsat has completed the acquisition of Telewizja Polsat in accordance with an agreement reached on November 15 last year for $1.4 billion. The deal will make it the biggest media conglomerate in Poland, a 3.3 million pay TV operator with the country’s leading national commercial broadcaster.
The Dish Network said this week that it has completed its acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Blockbuster. ‘We are pleased to have purchased the assets of Blockbuster and look forward to building on the nationally recognized Blockbuster brand while improving the experience of delivering entertainment to consumers,’ said Tom Cullen, executive vice president for DISH Network.
IMS Research in the US, (which makes its living out of predicting set tops and similar device installations) says there’s no worry about cord cutting in the US and expects digital cable TV subscribers in the US to increase by 7.8 million from the end of 2010 to the end of 2015, but confirms that cable TV as a whole will drop 2.75 million subscribers during the same period. It also predicts DTH to be up by 2.5% a year and IPTV homes to rise by over 20% a year over the same period. But there will be almost NO cord cutting between now and 2015 ‘ remember you heard it from IMS first. Faultline acknowledges that Cord cutting will be slow, but it will certainly be under way for 2015.
Nokia said today that it would cut its workforce dramatically to save ‘1 billion by 2013 and will transfer 3,000 Symbian employees to Accenture and it will cut other workers by a further 4,000. Nokia expects these reductions to happen in phases up to the end of 2012.
ST Micro reported its first quarter 2011 with revenues of $2.54 billion, about $300 million less than the immediate prior quarter and about $200 million more than this time last year. Revenues were strong in automotive applications and in Analog, MEMS, Microcontrollers and Power Discrete offerings.