UK researcher Informa says that digital TV is sweeping through the Asia Pacific region and that China has overtaken Japan as the biggest digital market during 2007 and will go on to make up over 50% of digital TV homes it the region by 2013. By 2007 China had 75 million homes receiving digital signals, a ten fold increase over 2001 and the company forecasts digital homes to approach 250 million in the whole of Asia Pacific by 2013 out of a total of 676 million TV homes
Informa also reckons that Pay TV revenue from Eastern Europe will rise from $5.6 billion now to $12 billion by 2013 with the most aggressive growth coming out of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The researcher says that it could go much higher to around $23 billion if advertising revenue is also counted. The number of digital TV homes will also rise to 70 million by 2013, compared with 22 million now.
Most US analysts are taking wild guesses this week at just how much it costs each operator to source the Apple 3G iPhone. One at Oppenheimer reckons AT&T is paying $325 for each device plus $100 for each subscriber signed up at Apple stores. Others estimates that Apple gets between $350 and $700 depending on which operator it is around the world, which is not much of a guess since it implies that it could be anything. AT&T has said that the cost of the device will impact the bottom line, but is happy with that given the number of new customers it hopes to attract, and the fact that they are high end data users. iSuppli calculates that the devices costs $173 to make so it’sa pretty good margin at any of those prices.
Netherlands based conditional access supplier Irdeto says that Hebei Broadcasting and Xinjiang Broadcast have chosen the Irdeto DVB conditional access solution for their migration to digital cable from analog. Irdeto will deliver two million smart cards to these two Chinese cable networks over the next 24 months. Hebei has 6.5 million subscribers and expects to upgrade 1 million subs in the next 18 months and Xinjiang has 1.3 million cable TV subscribers. In total China has 151 million, mostly analog, cable subscribers.
Nielsen reckons content from Sony Pictures Television TV and Internet properties reach households that spends $346 billion in consumer packaged goods. This number came out merging several of the Neilsen metrics from its Homescan panel, National People Meter television panel and NetView panel. By fusing this data together the aim is to deliver insight into which TV shows and websites are watched by key marketing targets. Sony Pictures Television is the first television studio to ask for this data to be merged about its programming. The idea seems to be to sell more Sony output to more TV stations while at the same time pushing up demand for its web properties.
Adobe said that its new Media Player has 15,000 pieces of content and more than 400 shows from major broadcasters and content publishers which it can show. MTV Networks has just added a selection of shows, including clips from Comedy Central, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Additionally, CBS has expanded its range of programming and added clips and full episodes of shows Million Dollar Password, Greatest American Dog and Flashpoint.
Spain has gone ahead and introduced its promised levy system from July 1st, with cellphones only carrying a levy of $1.70 while MP3 players will get charged $4.90. The idea is to raise a specific amount, between $172 million and $184 million in the first year and then adjust the levy to keep it there.
NBC in the US is planning to show the Olympics on a PC as well as on its TV coverage. The idea is to pre-select the sports you want to watch and the programming will download automatically to your PC once it has aired. It has to run on the new Vista operating system with software provided by media technology company Wavexpress.
In-Stat says that shipments of personal navigation devices (PNDs) were far higher than expected last year, reaching 30.7 million shipments, up from 13.3 million in 2006. Of course that’s depending on who’s forecast numbers for 2007 you were using. In-Stat clearly under predicted them. The big driver was the massive drops in price throughout the year. But the researcher warns that the PND market faces strong competition from both mobile phone handset navigation and embedded automotive navigation systems.
So when it says that global shipments will grow to 68 million units in 2012, its probably going to over predict that this time.
US cable equipment supplier Arris says that it has renewed its agreement with Germany’s largest cable TV operator Kabel Deutschland to supply a substantial volume of its Cable Modem Termination Systems. It also says that it has tied up in the US with BlackArrow, a provider of ad-management systems and merged its VoD cable offering so that addressable advertising can be delivered ‘ appropriate adverts, different to each household ‘ to cable networks. It will show this technology at the Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia.