All the final hurdles for making AOL a separate company from Time Warner have been worked out and approved by the Broad of directors and the process will complete towards the end of this year when AOL will become an independent and publicly traded company in the US.
The long running fight between Cablevision and content companies over the user of a network based DVR is pretty much over. The US Solicitor General has denied a petition from content companies to have the case heard by the Supreme Court which means the current decision to allow nPVR use will stand. Expect a rapid roll out of similar services almost immediately, all over the US.
E Ink Corp, which makes the display technology for the Amazon Kindle and Sony e-book reader, has agreed to be acquired by Prime View International of Taiwan for $215 million. Prime View is the manufacturing partner of E Ink on devices for both Amazon and Sony, the two market leaders. Next stop color versions by 2010. Prime View bought the electronic ink technology of Philips back in 2005.
Sony and Samsung, through their long term joint venture S-LCD, said this week that their second 8th generation line with capacity for 70,000 sheets a month, will come on stream. It has cost the two around $1.5 billion in a deal announced a year ago.
Meanwhile Samsung Mobile Display a joint venture with S-LCD and Samsung, the world’s largest manufacturer of OLED displays, will show 14.1 inch and 31 inch diagonal OLED TV panels the Display Week 2009 exhibition in the US this week. The 31 inch is claimed to be the world’s first OLED display featuring 1080p resolution, a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, and an ultra-slim design of only 8.9mm. The company will also show the world’s thinnest “flapping” OLED panel, one that can flutter in a breeze, which is just 0.05mm thick.
Nvidia and partners this week showed off 12 Mobile Internet devices (MIDs) which can show HD video, powered by the NVIDIA Tegra processor, at the Taiwanese Computex show. They include netbooks and tablet formats, support Flash video and up to 1080p video playback. Nvidia reckons that they can be kept permanently on and yet still have 5x the battery life of current netbooks. Partners include Compal, ICD, Inventec, Rainbow, Mobinnova, Pegatron and Wistron. Nvidia also had an even longer list of PC builders that have opted to use its new ION Graphics Processor chips at the show.
Kempner Robinson, a UK intellectual property law firm, says Google’s policy of allowing a business’s trade marks to be used by rivals as AdWords in Google searches will be challenged this month in the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ECJ’s Advocate General’s opinion on this is due on 4th June (tomorrow) and a binding ECJ decision is likely in about 6 months time. There is a high likelihood says the law firm, that big brands and other trade mark owners will be able to block the activity in Europe.
DS2, the Spanish chip maker, which leads Powerline chip efforts, will collaborate with Cavium Networks in the US, to offer 1080p60 HD video distribution to flat panel displays using DS2 powerline chips. These will be offered to consumer electronic manufacturers, service providers, gaming console vendors to connect video sources with flat panel displays without wires (apart from, that is, the power cable). A software development kit is already available.
It looks like the committee formed to look at that low-ball offer from Kudelski Group to buy the rest of the OpenTV shares, has rejected the proposal, which was to buy the remainder of the shares it didn’t already own for $127 million. Kudelski paid $132 million in 2006 for control and just 26.7% of the total beneficial ownership. So if OpenTV had performed well and not gone down in value, that offer should be more like $380 million. Obviously is has gone down in value, but the committee didn’t quite agree it had gone that far. It described the offer as ‘inadequate and not in the best interests of the Company and its stockholders’. The share price has already gone above the offer price by around 25%, since the offer was first made in February.
Hutchison handset unit INQ will deliver a cheap phone for the social network of the moment, Twitter, which will reach stores in time for the holiday buying season. It will have one-touch access to the microblogging service and cost under $140, said INQ’s CEO Frank Meehan and is likely to be sold by Hutchison stablemate 3 Group in territories such as the UK and Italy, but will also be offered to other operators worldwide.
US researcher In-Stat says that the number of smart phones upon which developers will be able to create native applications, will increase rapidly over the next five years, with almost 30% of smart phones, some 100 million units, based on Operating Systems which supports app stores. At present, the researcher says, iPhone users are by far the most active Apps Store users, significantly outpacing users of Blackberry, Palm OS or Windows Mobile phones.
We won’t be able to say that Mobile TV is unpopular for much longer, the leading streaming mobile TV service in the US, MobiTV just said that it has reached 7 million subscribers, adding the last 2 million in just 6 months. It is now streaming billions of minutes a year to the largest subscriber base in the industry and goes to more than 350 different handset types, across 20 carrier networks, including Sprint, AT&T and Alltel in the US.