The fate of Nortel’s prime CDMA and LTE Access assets gets curiouser and curiouser, with private equity firm MatlinPatterson subsidairy MPAM Wireless entering the bidding this week at $725 million, to overbid the stalking horse bid from Nokia Siemens. Meanwhile Canadian handset maker RIM said that it had been prepared to bid $1.1 billion, but for some reason it says management doesn’t want its money, because in order to table that bid it has to agree not to bid for any other part of Nortel, which it plans to. It publicized the problem so that it can put pressure on management to change its mind. It says it wants to keep the assets in Canadian ownership.
IPTV UK set top browser specialist ANT has stepped out of its comfort zone and written applications for an EPG, DVR and VoD, plus channel change function and pushed advertising and has its first buyer lined up in satellite TV operator Arab Media Corporation and will roll its service out over 26 countries in the Middle East and North Africa in 2010.
It’s about time Barnes and Noble responded to Amazon’s Kindle and its store and at least it has now come out with its own e-book service, on the back of buying Fictionwise back in March. Fictionwise only had about 60,000 e-books back then, but has morphed into BN.com, with over 700,000 books available. These can be read on Apple iPhones, BlackBerrys and various laptop or desktop computers. Some 500,000 of these are free, through an agreement with Google to provide public domain books. Amazon has just 330,00 books available for Kindle.
Vodafone this week has added a new service platform for the expanding machine-to-machine (M2M) sector which analyst Berg Insight says will reach €8.9 billion by 2012, up from €3bn last year, Vodafone is eager to cash in. Initially Vodafone’s M2M platform will be targeted at smart metering, connected cars and remote equipment monitoring, with other applications to follow over time and according to demand. The team has 100 people to start.
Microsoft Mediaroom has claimed another customer at du TV+ in Dubai and claims it has already signed IPTV 1,000 customers since July 1st. It has some HD channels and 130 channels in total and subscriptions start at AED 30 ($8) and for du TV+ with a DVR AED 55 ($15) per month.
AirTies said this week that India’s Smart Digivision will use its IPTV set-tops as part of its MyWay service, being rolled out across 54 large cities in India including New Delhi and Mumbai. The service offers 150 TV channels, VoD, music, gaming, education and e-commerce and is deployable on the broadband networks of incumbent telco operators BSNL and MTNL.
India’s Reliance ADA Group, will put up $325 million in investment to work with DreamWorks Studios as part of an $825 million total funding package, of which Disney is expected to contribute $174 million, which will see the firm make 5 to 6 films each year. Dreamworks has been looking to close out a deal like this since its partnership with Paramount fell apart and this was triggered when Disney agreed to distribute the films and put up some of the cash. Reliance will also get Indian distribution rights to the films.
In the UK WiMAX in the 2.5 GHz range has been demonstrated by the Mobile WiMAX Acceleration Group and the results its trials are now being made public. The system was used on public safety, CCTV monitoring, building inspection and workforce mobility, and covered 7.5 square kilometers from the centre of Maidstone in Kent. Users included Kent Fire & Rescue Service and Maidstone Borough Council. The trial concluded that their were benefits over other existing technologies. A copy of the report can be ordered from www.mwaguk.com.
The on-off marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo has often been pushed as becoming a search engine advertising deal instead, and once more such a deal appears to be on, with activist investor Carl Icahn speaking out in favor of a deal between the two. The deal might come to a head as early as next week say recent leaks which have been acknowledged by the two parties.
IPTV middleware specialist Minerva Networks, has a new version (4.0) of its iTVManager featuring a Widgets Engine which enables blended Internet and TV services, whole-home DVR function, new user interfaces and advanced redundancy and high-availability features, it claims. The system can accept RSS news feeds, stocks, weather and traffic information, visual voice mail and caller ID.
UK researcher Coda Research Consultancy said this week that portable laptop and netbook users accessing the internet via mobile broadband will produce $48 billion in operator revenues in 2017. It also says there will be 418 million of them worldwide by then, and they will generate and consume an immense 1.8 exabytes of traffic per month – a forty fold increase over 2009. Coda says that the most significant growth will occur in the Asia-Pacific region, where users will amount to 162 million by 2017 while Europe will account for 94 million users, and North America 58 million. The thrust of its argument is that LTE makes broadband a reality as it is rolled out.
Nokia has sold its Symbian Professional Services unit to Accenture which is responsible for Symbian customer engineering and support. The unit consists of 165 people and we don’t think it means Nokia is any less keen on Symbian, just that the support function is more likely to sit better within Accenture where customers are after similar services. The deal will close by the end of the third quarter 2009.