Mobile video specialist Dilithium, said this week that Etisalat, has chosen its ViVAS TV video system for deployment in UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. In a separate deal in the same region it has supplied Zain, with a system for 3G video and web communications.
UK video software house RGB Networks, has introduced Dynamic Bandwidth Manager to European cable operators, which it says lets them expand VOD with existing QAM and fiber infrastructure by using its VOD transrater. It reckons that operators can deliver up to 50% more VOD on existing bandwidth by using this.
US IPTV middleware supplier Minerva Networks, said this week that two of its customers, Telus the leading telecom operator in Western Canada, and Telefonica del Sur, the leading telecommunications operator in Southern Chile, are enjoying rapid subscriber growth and are now featuring the largest IPTV deployments in Canada and Latin America respectively. The operations include HD, DVR, multi-room DVR, pay per view, and VoD and Minerva says that combined, the two companies are installing over 25,000 new IPTV set-top boxes every month.
Microsoft will spend between $80 million and $100 million in advertising and promotional spend for its new Bing search engine, says Advertising Age. It also said that Google spends just $25 million a year on advertising while Ask.com spent $57 million at launch. The focus of the campaign will be to ask if current search engines really solve your problems. It’s a search engine, not a counselor.
Researcher Juniper Research says that revenues from streamed mobile music services and full-track downloads will rise from $2.5 billion in 2009 to nearly $5.5 billion in 2013. A greater variety of applications and content, all-inclusive data packages, consumer friendly UIs and an increase in handset storage capacity, will drive this, it says. It also says that ad funded music services will falter, and that the Far East and China will account for the largest share of mobile music revenues throughout the 2009-2013 forecast period, followed by Western Europe
If you’re an O2 user who doesn’t want an iPhone, you may be getting frustrated by the carrier’s reluctance to offer other cutting edge handsets, for fear they eat into the Apple exclusive. But with the future of those exclusives in doubt, the choices should be getting more interesting ‘ and if you haven’t already defected from O2, you could have the first chance in the UK of getting your hands on the much-hyped Palm Pre.
It seems the bidding war between Telefonica ‘ O2’s Spanish parent ‘ and rivals Vodafone and Orange is over, with Telefonica the winner. Nothing is confirmed, but The Guardian newspaper says O2 has ‘seen off fierce competition for the new handset from Vodafone and Orange’ and won an exclusive.
Sky Deutschland will launch a whole new set of new digital bouquets to leverage from its new effective parent News Corp and its access to content. This will include Sky Welt (World), Sky HD, Sky Film, Sky Sport and Sky Bundesliga, as well as a new price structure which will be operational from July 4. The number of HD channels will grow from two to six for a €10 premium. The basic tier will be €16.90, and the movie tier will cost €32.90, as will the sports package. Soccer (Sky Bundesliga) will cost a massive €44.90 and a top tier with them all in will be €54.90 plus a reduced €5 premium for HD versions.
Spanish powerline chip maker DS2 says it has its third generation AITANA++ chip which will offer 200Mbps and it will show it formally at Computex, in Tawian. AITANA++ features a reduced Bill of Materials, and so costs less for device manufacturers to bundle it. Power consumption on the chip is down 70% DS2 says.
By 2013, the average household will have two and a half times the number of digital devices including computing, gaming, consumer electronics and portable and mobile wireless devices, as there were in 2008, says US researcher In-Stat. More devices will be network-enabled, with various wired and wireless technologies, like coax, phone wiring, powerline, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. Well it wouldn’t take a crystal ball to come up with that one, not when the prevailing aim in cellular is that we will each own 4 cellular attached devices by around the same period.
NTT subsidiary Plala says it has reached 700,000 IPTV subscribers for ‘Hikari TV’, according to Media Research Asia. It says the company expects to go past 1.1 million customers by March 2010. Most of them are on the basic plan that costs the equivalent of $ 38 a month, it says.
Facebook has taken on board a $200 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies a Russian investment group, in exchange for 1.96 % of its stock. At that value the company is worth roughly $10 billion. DST is also planning to buy out a number of employee shareholders for another $100 million.
Screen Digest reckons that In-Game Advertising will be worth $1 billion by 2014 and reached the figure by asking planners at advertising agencies. We have covered this market from infancy and in-game advertising should have been worth a lot more by even today, but agencies have continued to fail to grasp the idea.
According to Advanced TV News Cablevision is on the verge of rolling out its network DVR this summer. Remember this was the one that it took all the way to an Appeals Court in order to get a ruling on whether or not this was legal. We reckon that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and all the others are standing in the wings waiting to see what happens and will then invest heavily in this area. It gives them more advertising inventory, costs less than home based DVRs and means they can enforce advertisement viewings ‘ though customers may hate that.
New research published today by Informa’s Music & Copyright service this week suggests that Universal Music Group (UMG) has extended its position as the largest recorded music company and music publisher for the third consecutive year at the end of 2008. The company increased its revenue share in both physical and digital recorded music to 28.7% in 2008, even though total revenues decreased.