In the results of US book store chain Barnes & Noble, for its second financial quarter, the company is claiming 20% of ebook sales since it launched its store late last year. It is also saying that its NookColor has taken the US by storm. Total sales for the second quarter were $1.9 billion, and sales at Barnes & Noble.com went up 59% even though its comparable store sales decreased by 3.3% compared to last year.
UK set top maker Amino said it now has a collaborative partnership to provision TransGaming’s on-demand video game platform, GameTree TV, on its Amino Freedom hybrid/OTT media center based on the Intel CE 4100 media processor.
Swiss set top maker Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB) has won a deal to supply a hybrid DVR to Canal Digital, the Telenor pay TV subsidiary which operates DTH service to around 1.7 million homes across Scandinavia. The service will use the Carbo ADB interface which runs on its latest ADB-5720SX DVR. The Carbo UI is already live with a number of European pay TV operators, and claims to offer super-fast channel change, and simplified one step menuing and an intuitive carrousel of icons.
We used to cover Sirius XM Radio, the US satellite radio company, quite a lot prior to the merger and it almost running out of money, with Liberty Media coming to the rescue. Well it has finally passed the 20 million customer mark and has signed a five-year extension of its broadcasting and marketing deal with the National Football League. It says the last 10 million customers signed more rapidly than the first 10 million.
Last week we never managed to slip in the fact that UPC, the Liberty Global cable operator has bought about a third of the customers from Fibernet Kommunik’ci’s, in Hungary. The transaction will be completed in the first quarter of 2011 and no price was given, and leaves Fibernet with around 150,000 households with around 80,00 changing hands. The transaction came after Invitel’s Hungarian subsidiary bought Fibernet, the fourth largest cable operator in Hungary.
The court of appeal that was looking at the Pirate Bay case has upheld all the convictions for video and music piracy in Sweden. The three individuals Frederik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstr’m were first convicted in April 2009. A fourth individual had his appeal delayed through ill health. The service is understood to be still operating but should now be switched off. Damages were increased from 32 million Swedish Krona ($4.6 million) to $6.6 million. The prison sentences were reduced to under a year for each defendant.
Digital Media Wire says that the US Government has seized the internet domains of dozens of websites which it claims are offering unauthorized copyrighted or counterfeit content though the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. They include Torrent-Finder.com, RapGodFathers.com, DVDProStore.com, Cartoon77.com, NFLJerseySupply.com and Handbag.com.
UK forecaster Juniper Research says that in-game purchases will overtake the pay per download model as the primary source of revenue for mobile games, by 2013, with Apple’s in-app billing mechanism leading the way. It says that end user revenues will go past $11 billion annually by 2015, around double what they were in 2009. Games tend to be offered free at the point of purchase to facilitate in-game buying.
US researcher In-Stat said this week that the number of 3D-enabled mobile devices shipped in 2014 will be more than 60 million units. These will use 3D technologies which do not require special glasses. Many of the chipsets found in today’s smartphones have the processing power to handle 3D the company said.
Californian video chip maker Zoran said that its acquisition of Microtune for $166 million has been approved by Microtune stockholders and has received all required regulatory approvals. Microtune shares have now been delisted from NASDAQ and the merger is complete.
Dish Network said today that Dish Remote Access, a free application which picks up placeshifted content from its Sling Enabled devices, is now available for the iPad. It claims (perhaps quite rightly) that it is the only pay-TV provider to offer a true TV everywhere solution, which is now extended to the iPad.
Telegent Systems a Californian analog TV chip maker now says it has shipped 100 million chips (up from 90 million a few months back) which bring mobile TV to a handset, with the great bulk of these being analog TV. It claims they have been widely adopted in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and India.
Israeli OTT pay TV provider Tvinci, said that it has expanded its offering for deployment on tablet devices with customized video storefront applications for the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and says it will offer its MediaHub and MediaStore APIs for customers and partners to customize their own application for additional tablets and other devices.
SmarDTV, a Kudelski company said this week that Swedish pay TV provider Com Hem has selected CI Plus products from SmarDTV. Com Hem is one of the leading distributors of TV, broadband and telephony in Sweden and has 1.76 million homes as customers.
Despite DVB-H still being pretty much dead in the continent of its birth, Europe, Thailand in Bangkok plans to test a commercial mobile TV service using DVB-H next month, after a memorandum of understanding between government-backed broadcaster MCOT and mobile handset provider International Engineering. It will cost around $3.3 million to set up and offers 6 free TV channels plus 8 paid channels and hopes for 100,000 customers.