US/Israeli media center software supplier Boxee has been acquired by Samsung for what many publications are guessing is about $30 million, not much more than has been invested in the start-up over the past 6 years, making it somewhat close to a firesale. Samsung is expected to implement the software on its Smart TVs. But given that the plan for Boxee was always to put its software on as many platforms as possible, it may be the end of that particular dream. Boxee said that it will now close its Cloud DVR on July 10th. Whether or not its own set top hardware base will continue is not clear at this point.
Dan Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund has increased its shares in Sony to 7% and asked the Sony board to appoint a new board of directors to manage a partially spun out Sony Entertainment. Loeb said he would like to be on the Sony board. He called for a Sony governance structure which focuses on increasing profitability, competitiveness and accountability. Sony is reviewing its options. Nothing that Loeb has proposed in any way helps Sony sort out the financial problems in its electronics operations, which is what really needs to be fixed.
Netherlands based fingerprint and watermark specialist Civolution, says it has a new multi-year contract for use of Teletrax software with NBC News Channel, a unit of NBC News. NBC News Channel will use Teletrax to understand usage of their pre-recorded and live content by NBC affiliates, US domestic and international clients. Teletrax tracks the usage of video 24/7 on a selection of broadcasters from the more than 2,000 channels currently monitored by Teletrax.
Technicolor says it has now shipped 100 million set tops for DirecTV, the US satellite pay TV provider, over a 20 year period in the US and Latin America.
Siemens says that the Ditto OTT offering in India from Zee Entertainment Enterprises is approaching one million customers. Siemens provides the technology for the offering. The service was only on 100,000 users a year ago but has an addressable market all over the world of more 500 million Zee TV viewers, it says. About 40 minutes a day is the typical usage of Zee’s OTT offering, and it expects this to rise to one hour. Zee New Media offers 21 channels to mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, entertainment boxes and connected TVs, both in India and globally in markets like the UK, UAE and Australia.
More people that have Smart TVs are using them more frequently says research from TP Vision the TV company licenced to use the Philips brand. It said that 72% of owners used their smart TV more than 25 times a month, presumably they mean connected to the internet that many times. About 43% of all app usage is catch-up TV and each month over 110,000 hours of additional content is sold.
UltraViolet is set to launch in Germany and France beginning September 30 according to David Bishop, president, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, and he said that a launch campaign will feature the James Bond title Skyfall. Further UV launches in Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium are planned, and it is already available in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zeeland.
The number of pay TV households reached 772 million during 2012, up from 585 million in 2008, according to a report from Digital TV Research. Asia Pacific increased by 126 million, which accounted for two-thirds of the global additions to bring its total to 433 million. North America with 112 million was the second largest region, although it only added 4 million. Pay TV revenues reached $184 billion in 2012, up by 28.5% from $143 billion in 2008. Cable generated the highest revenues by platform, at $87 billion, but cable revenues are flattening, and DTH will soon overtake cable. IPTV revenues reached $12 billion, up from $2.8 billion in 2008. North America generates about half the world’s total pay TV revenues.
Separately a report from NSR, its 6th on the Global DTH Market, shows that DTH usage is shifting from established economies such as North America and Western Europe, and growing faster in the developing world. But revenues will continue to be concentrated in established economies. However new subscribers will come from India, Indonesia, and Sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria. By 2022 it forecasts that over 1/3 of all new channels will be HD. It seems to miss the fact that Latin American growth is almost entirely being driven by DTH and that its overall revenue growth is more than India. NSR says it forecasts 313 million DTH subscribers and $134.4 billion in subscription revenues by 2022.
Marbridge Consulting has a report out on China’s online gaming market and says that revenues reached $9.1 billion in 2012, up 32.9% in a year and are expected to rise to $16.1 billion over the next five years. Improved Internet penetration to 43%, or 578 million users by Q1 2013, a rise in the average income per home, and greater emphasis on browser game development to reach less hard-core players will help drive continued growth there.
Canadian Broadband equipment provider Sandvine said this week it has received over $7 million in expansion orders from three Tier 1 operators, during June with $4.5 million coming from a North American operator and a further $2.5 million from two European mobile companies. The company also reported its quarterly results with $23.5 million in revenue for Q2 up 27%, and net income of $0.9 million, with wireless and DSL clients each making up 37% of revenues and cable most of the rest.
Italian pay TV provider Mediaset Premium has teamed up Vodafone Italia to launch what it is calling a TV Everywhere service. It costs a colossal €39.90 a month, but includes some Mediaset channels as well as Italian league football. The system can be received on a set top at home or on tablets and we think it uses HSUPA connections at up to 42 Mbps. The offers focuses on the iPad Mini and for an additional €10 a month, customers can get access to Vodafone’s new LTE network, which it says can offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Should have used LTE broadcast really.
Ten years ago in Faultline
Back on July 7th 2003 we predicted that by 2009 Cinemas would cease to be the mainstream channel for film, and we went on to forecast ideas like rights lockers, higher density DVDs, and OTT and advanced video search and recommendation. We also pointed out that for every film released by a major studio, there are ten that are filmed. And for every one filmed, there are ten more stories which have sold their film rights. The number of movies could go up by two orders of magnitude and this is still sadly true, but is only just beginning to be accommodated by companies like YouTube and Netflix. We noted the studio obsession, still in play, of using special CGI effects to animate stories that previously could not be told. But the core observation turned out to be true, DVD took over as the leading revenue stream ahead of theatrical release, well before 2009.