Kabel Deutschland, true to our analysis published during the past couple of weeks, reckons it can get more value out of going public than selling itself off to the highest bidder. It has now confirmed plans to IPO but has yet to give any details. Most blogs were speculating on just who could afford what is the largest single cable operator in Europe, and most private equity groups were thought to be bidding, but perhaps in the current economic climate, low-balling.
US researcher In-Stat says that almost 37% of broadband homes in the US are extremely interested, and another 37% are somewhat interested, in watching over the top video content on the home TV. Previous studies did not show anything like this demand and In-Stat is seeing this as rapidly growing awareness brought about by Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and Apple offering streamed or downloadable TV and movie content. By 2013 In-Stat predicts that nearly 40% of all digital TV shipments will be web-enabled devices.
There is a new force in US broadband. Clearwire announced at its quarterly results that its Clear service is now in 27 markets across the US, reaching 34 million people. It has now acquired 688,000 subscribers and is working with Comcast, Sprint and Time Warner Cable. Its fourth quarter subscriber growth of 87,000 was more than the three previous quarters combined. The company said it would be in reach of 120 million people by the end of 2010.
TiVo has hit something of a wall regarding cable’s Switched Digital Video and is asking for FCC help. It has made a complaint simply because the spectrum re-harvesting efforts of the cable operators in the US mean that instead of sending 300 channels to every TV, they only send those which are requested. The problem for TiVo is that cable operators won’t let a TiVo box request a channel, so it cannot record anything for later. Presumably the answer is to have licensed devices which can be added to the network to legitimately request channels. The FCC will have to mandate it because cable is not going to volunteer that kind of change.
In the UK Government MPs have called for the government to do an about turn on its proposal to tax people 50p a month for broadband lines. The money is supposed to be used to fund super fast broadband, which of course is likely to only be delivered in areas where people can afford it ‘ in other words the poor subsidizing the rich.
The Korea Times reports that the country’s IPTV operators will both double subscribers this year. Korea Telecom are on 1 million subscribers looking to go to 2 million, while rival South Korea Telecom is on 402,000 looking to double to 800,000. Both companies began offering VoD over the internet, and only switched to multicast IPTV once regulations allowed it, 18 months ago.
Handsets sales were down by 0.9% by number in 2009 to 1.2 billion units says US researcher Gartner. In the fourth quarter the market returned to growth with mobile phone sales to end users up 8.3% to 340 million units.
Two independent App Stores, PocketGear, which has acquired Handango, have now merged to create a mobile storefront larger than any other independent, behind Apple’s App Store and Google Android Market. The new PocketGear store has more than 140,000 premium and free titles for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The new company will continue to operate under the PocketGear brand.
UK set top specialist Pace says that Luxembourg based satellite TV operator M7 Group has its HD range of set tops and Pace will develop M7’s next generation devices, an HD set-top and an HD DVR. M7 Group provides DTH satellite TV services in the Benelux countries using its brand names CanalDigitaal, TV Vlaanderen and TeleSAT.
The European Commission this week is being largely tipped as ready to approve the merger in the UK of the Orange and T-Mobile networks. Telecom Paper says that the European Commission will reject an appeal from the UK’s Office of Fair Trading for the inquiry to be passed back to it.
NDS will provide the conditional access and be the prime systems integrator for the On Digital Media’s launch of a direct-to-home satellite platform in South Africa. The new service, TopTV, will go live in Q2 2010 and go up against incumbent Multichoice, which just happens to be part of a group which own NDS rival Irdeto. On Digital Media will use an MPEG 4, DVB-S2 based service and use NDS VideoGuard and MediaHighway set-top software, as well as the NDS EPG. The TopTV platform will provide around 30 channels.
Canal+ said that it will launch a dedicated 3D channel in France by Christmas 2010. It adds that in the first half of the year it will solve the remaining technical issues and then expects to launch the channel by Christmas. No pricing has been announced, but it will be on top of existing monthly fees and viewers will also need a 3D compatible set top and TV set.
Austrian public broadcaster ORF said this week that its catch up online TV service has already had 17.4 million streams requested in its first 100 days of operation. The service was launched in November and offers 70 on-demand regular programs.
Reuters reports that Xerox is suing Google and Yahoo over infringement in search patents which it says date back to 2001. Can you imagine a court telling Google to switch off its search engine ‘ it could cause a revolution and stop the earth from rotating. Xerox wants damages and an injunction on further use of the technology. The patent appears to relate to answering search queries from multiple sources such as documents and online data, and merging the answers.
OpenTV said today that it is redeeming all of its outstanding Class A ordinary shares, after the successful bid by Kudelski at $1.55 per share. Basically in a takeover under US rules, if you get more than 90% acceptances, the other shares have to follow.
NDS also says this week that it has a deal with Telekom Austria, the fixed line part of Telekom Austria Group, to extend their relationship using Videoguard on the operator’s IPTV service. NDS has provided the security for Telekom Austria’s IPTV service since 2005 so this really is just a contract extension.