SiriusXM has reported record revenue of $1.3 billion for the fourth quarter, up 9% year-on-year, and $5 billion for the full-year 2016, a growth of 10%. Net income for the year was $746 million, rising 46%.
Oculus, the VR firm purchased by Facebook, has been ordered to pay $500 million to games company ZeniMax for breaking an NDA signed in 2012 for the technology used in the Oculus Rift VR headsets.
Vodafone Germany is launching a new TV platform this month called GigaTV – integrating linear TV, on-demand content and streaming apps. The 1TB UHD set top costs €14.99 a month, whereas the multiscreen only version is available for a monthly fee of €9.99. It will be available over the former Kabel Deutschland network.
Fox has launched a new Nordic streaming service Fox+, in partnership with MTG-owned Viaplay. Fox+ offers drama and entertainment content from 20th Century Fox, Fox 21 Television Studios, FX Productions and FNG Global.
Fox Sports is offering highlights of this weekend’s Super Bowl in virtual reality, in partnership with VR platform developer LiveLike. The Fox Sports VR App for iOS and Android will be showing up to 20 highlights of the best plays in 360-degree video, and is also available on the Samsung Gear VR platform.
Music recognition firm SoundHound has raised $75 million in funding to further the development of its Houndify voice-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) platform for businesses and developers. Houndify claims to have the world’s fastest speech recognition software and says its Collective AI tool enables customers to extend the functionality of existing knowledge domains without having to fully access underlying libraries. Investors in the round include Nvidia GPU Ventures, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Nomura Holdings, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance, and RSI Fund.
Sky and Discovery have finally ended their feud, with Sky agreeing to continue distributing 12 of Discovery’s channels to its UK and German customers. Sky initially argued that Discovery was charging over the odds for channels with poor viewing figures.
US encoding company Harmonic has partnered with Mirantis, a provider of open cloud technology. The pair say they are offering content and service providers access to what they claim is the industry’s first media processing system for live and VoD production on the OpenStack software platform. Harmonic has previously offers an AWS version of its encoding.
Verizon’s Go90 OTT service is dead, according to Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn, speaking to FierceOnlineVideo this week. Verizon has spent an estimated $80 million on marketing for the ad-supported platform, but Rayburn said: “No one uses it. It almost doesn’t exist at this point.” However, Verizon CFO Matt Ellis reassured investors in an earnings call last week: “We have seen digital video consumption gain traction in the last year. At the content and solutions layer of our three-tier strategy, the combination of AOL, Go90 and other content has enabled cross-platform sharing. This strategy expands our distribution and revenue opportunity globally across carriers and networks.”
Charter Communications has received a law suit from The New York Attorney General for allegedly failing to deliver promised internet speeds to at least 640,000 consumers since 2012, in the New York area which Charter inherited from its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. In addition, Time Warner Cable is accused of supplying 900,000 consumers with modems incapable of streaming video. “The allegations in today’s lawsuit confirm what many of you have long suspected. Spectrum-Time Warner has been ripping you off,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. That’s a claim we see as entirely disingenuous, given it has only just taken over the problem and promised to do something about it.
The worldwide video entertainment spend is forecast to increase to $280 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 3%, according to research from Futuresource Consulting. SVoD services will lead the pack, set to hit 485 million global subscriptions by 2020, growing from 236 million at the end of 2016. DVD and Blu-ray will not fare so well, projected to fall to $9.1 billion by 2020, from $21.6 billion in 2015.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has laid out plans for a phased roll out of DTT (digital terrestrial TV), starting in metro Indian cities in 2019 and spreading across the whole country by the end of 2023. Four private firms will provide DTT services to public service broadcaster Doordarshan.
US broadcasting company Entercom Communications is merging with CBS Radio to create a radio platform with 244 stations nationwide, possible the largest radio collective in the US.
Shipments of LCD TV sets reportedly increased 1.6% in 2016 to 219.2 million units, despite number one vendor Samsung experiencing a 0% year-on-year growth, as well as second placed LG Electronics having a 4.1% fall in shipments in the period. According to data from WitsView, the LCD TV market is forecast to grow to 225 million shipments by the end of this year, although Samsung has just launched its Quantum Dot TVs and LGE has OLED products which may impact LCD TV shipments. It’s funny how shipments used to be 235 million a few years ago, and no-one except Faultline Online Reporter has reported or forecast a fall, and yet here we are almost 20 million shipments below that figure. To ship more prices will have to fall by 40% or more over the next 12 months.
Magyar Telecom, not to be confused with Deutsche Telekom’s Magyar Telekom, will sell off its holdings in Hungarian ISP Invitel to the China CEE Investment Co-operation Fund. It owns 9% of the shares, and the remaining shares are held by private equity group Mid Europa Partners.
US operator Cable One has just launched a low-bandwidth Ethernet service for the enterprise market called EZ Ethernet, with symmetrical bandwidth options of 3 Mbps, 5 Mbps, and 10 Mbps.
Mobile gaming pulled in revenues of $40.6 billion globally in 2016, an 18% year-on-year growth, to put it level with box office sales, according to SuperData Research. Asia accounted for more than 50% of this with $24.8 billion, compared to $6.9 billion in North America and $5.7 billion in Europe.
TV audience data leader Nielsen has completed its $560 million acquisition of movie metadata and music tracking business Gracenote, from Tribune Media. Gracenote will keep its name and operate inside Nielsen’s Watch segment.