UK transmission and broadcasting network Arqiva has acquired Selective Media, a location based WiFi media specialist. Arqiva had already acquired 50% of the business as part of its acquisition of Spectrum Interactive last year, but has now acquired the remaining 50%. The idea is to provide targeted advertising campaigns across the whole of Arqiva’s WiFi network. The company can offer on-line display, pre-roll and video on demand (VoD) opportunities in high footfall areas and use targeting methods based on location, age, gender, and time to deliver highly effective campaigns.
Invitel’s Magyar Telecom has reported first quarter results with revenue down to €39.7 million compared to €42.7 million last year, down 7%. Costs rose 35% due to new taxes introduced by the Hungarian government taking profits from €6.7 million to a loss of €7.1 million. Voice represented €7.4 million of revenues, TV and internet was €5.8 million, down 11%, due to lower ADSL revenue and falling customer numbers.
This week Virgin Media named Tom Mockridge, a previous News Corp executive who learned the pay TV business at the feet of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, to become the next CEO of Virgin Media in the UK. This will happen upon closing the purchase of Virgin Media by Liberty Global which is scheduled for early June 2013. At that point current CEO Neil Berkett will stand down. Mockridge has served in several key positions in News Corp, including CEO European TV operations, Chief Executive Sky Italia and Chief Executive of News International.
Disney has cut a new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement with Electronic Arts to develop games based on Star Wars characters and storylines. EA will target all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.
Deutsche Telecom had a fall in revenue of 4.5% to €13.78 billion, with EBITDA also down by 4.3% to €4.3 billion, and net profit up 30.9% to €767 million. TV customers in Germany were up 70,000 to 2.036 million, while broadband was flat (as many European telcos are) at 12.44 million homes. TV customers outside Germany were up 73,000 to just over 3 million, across all of Greece, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia. Broadband lines are in more countries and rose 4.4% to 4.82 million. This is the first time Deutsche Telekom has been above 5 million global pay TV homes, mostly IPTV, with a significant minority on satellite and a handful on cable.
News Corporation has reported $9.54 billion in revenue, up 14% for its third quarter, which is to the end of March. Much of the revenue increase is down to the growth at the Cable Network Programming, Filmed Entertainment and Television segments. Publishing was however down and some growth comes from the inclusion of Sky Deutschland and Fox Sports Australia figures being incorporated. Net income was $2.85 billion, almost 3 times the $937 million for the corresponding period last year. This rose because of increased ownership in Sky Deutschland and from the sale of a stake in Sky Network Television in New Zealand, as well as a $11 million gain from BSkyB’s share repurchase program.
MaxLinear said this week it has had its MxL683 chip selected by Technicolor for a new hybrid HD ISDB-T set top for the Latin America market. This is for DTH satellite operators in Latin America (likely DirecTV), and takes multiple channel receptions down just a single cable from the dish to the set top. The MaxLinear receiver tunes the reception of HD local channels broadcast over terrestrial free to air transmission.
French CDN supplier Broadpeak, said that D-Smart, a new Turkish digital broadcasting platform, has deployed Broadpeak’s BkS400 video servers to manage its OTT streaming services. It will use HTTP adaptive streaming for its more than 2 million subscribers on a wide range of devices, including TVs, PCs, and tablets.
The tablet market saw 40.6 million units shipped in the first three months of 2013, up from the 18.7 million shipped in Q1 2012, according to Strategy Analytics. Tablet shipments had 117% growth over Q1 last year. Apple shipped 19.5 million tablets, up from 11.8 million in 2012. It accounted for 48% of the world tablet market in Q1. Android shipped 17.6 million tablets, up from a paltry 6.4 million in Q1 2012. Android now accounts for 43.4% of the tablet market. Microsoft sold 3 million tablets in Q1 2013, taking about 7.4% of the tablet market share. It launched its Windows 8 OS tablets in October of 2012, so year over year the growth is significant, especially since 3 million tablets are about half of what Android sold in Q1 2012. When considering ‘white box’ tablets such as Amazon’s Android-based Kindle Fire, Android actually surpasses Apple tablets, 52% to 41%.