The iPod was duly launched last week, but the noise about the device actually heightened, rather than abated. Sales of the first day were said to be around 200,000, and 500,000 devices had been sold before the 4th of July US holiday. Apple watcher ThinkSecret came up with pictures of hidden features which suggest the iPhone will support Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and what appears to be a way of configuring email to work with Microsoft’s Exchange server. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has been heard saying that the iPhone will be releasing more features over the coming weeks and promised to address corporate email, although we can’t imagine any CIOs offering to pay for iPhones.
Internet audience measurement company comScore has got away its IPO, selling some 5.3 million shares, most of them new shares with the money going to the company, at $16.50 each, with proceeds to comScore being around $74 million after costs. On their first day trading the shares rose 25%. comScore collects data from more than 2 million internet users, who have granted permission to measure their Internet usage patterns and had sales of $66.3 million last year.
A few SEC filings for Blockbuster shows some changes at the company, with the legal action brought by Netflix for copying its online DVD rental business model ‘resolved’ and a new CEO being put in place. Our take is that the Netflix case had no legs, and given that Blockbuster said there was no material change to its outlook, little, if any, money changed hands. Blockbuster also said it plans to close 282 stores this year and has appointed James Keyes, ex 7-11 boss as CEO on a guaranteed salary and bonus of at least $1,250,000 a year, replacing John Antioco,
A report from research company Adams Media says that US spending on online DVD rental services will reach $3.2 billion by 2011 making up over 37% of the video rental market. The online rental market will grow 41% this year, to $1.9 billion and at present Netflix has 75% of the market, but Blockbuster’s rival service added more subscribers than Netflix for the first time last quarter.
The European Commission is said by Telecom Paper to be on the verge of referring Germany to the European Court of Justice over its telecoms laws after its failure to stick to European policy in drafting a new law affecting Deutsche Telekom. It has opened the door for a regulatory holiday for the dominant telco, in contravention of EC directives.
More on the IPTV contract at SureWest in the US, with Irdeto coming back to us and admitting that yes it lost the contract for content protection, because SureWest management wanted to move from the Irdeto smart card system to a software only system. Irdeto bid its Softclient system, and lost out to arch rival Widevine. Such an about turn is quite rare. Irdeto told us, ”the ecosystem SureWest selected to best meet their requirements was not aligned with Irdeto’s partner and alliance program.’ Which suggests that Widevine has better US partners than Irdeto right now.
The market for TV services which are delivered over the public internet will rise to $5.8 billion by 2011 says a report from iSuppli this week, from just $423 million in 2006. Over 60% of Americans ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they wanted the ability to connect the internet to their TV, said iSuppli, with male respondents even more favorable at 71%. Sounds like Apple TV has hit a hot market.
Network Game Interaction of China has raised some $10 million in its first round of finance in a deal led by GSR Ventures. The company already has its advertising in 50 Chinese online games and has partnered with Nielsen to provide audience measurement on advertisements.
BD+ Technologies the company formed to exploit BD+, the added layer of content protection for video played on Blu-ray Disks has announced details of its licensing program. The program includes the BD+ Specifications and an Agreement for BD+ Adopters (Player/Chip Manufacturers), as well as BD+ Content Participants and authorized BD+ code developers. BD+ is a Virtual Machine-based content protection technology created especially for the Blu-ray format, and sits above the AACS protection system that Blu-ray shares with the HD DVD format and is owned by Panasonic, Sony and Twentieth Century Fox.
Vodafone has come up with a uniform flat pricing for its roaming internet service called Vodafone Connect Abroad set at €12 a day when roaming in Europe, Egypt, Australia and New Zealand, and with partners in France, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium using HSDPA at speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps.
Operator Bharti Airtel will launch an IPTV service in the top six or seven cities in India after IPTV trials held since mid-2006 across 1,000 homes in Gurgaon. It will launched first in Delhi, then Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Gurgaon and Jaipur. IPTV will be aimed at top end customers, and DTH satellite television services will be offered at a level below this.
Advanced TV reports that a Spanish TV association called UTECA is lobbying the Government for a position on mobile TV as it prepares for legislation to be approved in July. The Association is made up of 7 channels owning broadcasters and is trying to insist that each of them get at least one mobile TV channel in any awarded multiplex.
The FCC has pushed through its CableCard legislation and has agreed waivers until February 17, 2009 for CenturyTel, En-Touch Systems, a cable overbuilder, Qwest, Verizon, Guiness Communications, Volcano Vision, the Rural ATM Digital Providers Group and the IPTV Operators Group. The underlying reason for most of these waivers was that CableCard was designed to split cable set tops from their encryption system, to create an open market in cable set tops, and most of these companies use technologies other than cable.
Microsoft has appointed Katherine Styponias as general manager of its Media & Entertainment Group to work with major content suppliers. Styponias joins Microsoft from Prudential Equity, where she was the most senior cable, entertainment and satellite equity analyst. The statement went on about her depth of knowledge in the entertainment industry and seems to imply that Microsoft will begin to contract directly for content, rather than leave it to its IPTV customers ‘ perhaps that represents a change in strategy for the group, we’ll keep an eye open for that.
British Telecom has appointed interactive advertising service provider Emuse Technologies as a preferred supplier of next-generation interactive advertising services for BT Vision, its hybrid IPTV digital TV service. The two will jointly develop the service, working with major brands and their advertising agencies to deliver interactive advertising.
UK satellite TV provider BSkyB said that it will offer its new digital terrestrial TV service which will use DVB-T technology, through PCs and will work with Microsoft to make this possible. Not sure why it needs Microsoft, since what’s needed is a piece of hardware that should come as a plug in card with a DVB-T tuner and decoder. Given the popularity of Adobe Flash video, this is almost certainly a mistake as it sound to us like it will use Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology or worse still the existing Microsoft Windows Media formats.
The US Global Tower Partners has been bought by a fund managed by Macquarie Group in a deal valued at $1.4 billion. Australian finance group Macquarie has purchased broadcaster networks in the UK Arqiva and National Grid Wireless and now dominates broadcast networks there, and mobile tower ownership is a very similar business financially. Global Tower has 2,500 towers and 4,600 rooftop sites for cellular services. The dominant tower owner in the US is Crown Castle, which bought the number two ranked Global Signal group last year for a similar fee.
Hungarian Broadcaster Antenna Hung’ria has signed a deal with Vodafone Hungary to co-operate in the launch of a DVB-H mobile TV service for Hungary, and will start testing a service this autumn. Antenna Hung’ria had previously agreed to work with Magyar Telekom, owned by Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, on a technical trial for DVB-in April.
French radio TV chip designer DiBcom has cut a deal with Pinnacle Systems in the US for it to use the new DiBcom tuner and demodulator, in a DVB-T Flash Stick. There’s not much point in actually selling it in the US, since digital TV there uses ATSC rather than DVB-T which is used, or committed for use, in 60 countries around the world, and is especially strong in Europe. Avid owned Pinnacle Systems will include 1 GB of flash memory which can be used to store programming.
French radio chip designer DiBcom has picked up €20 million ($27 million) of investment from Natixis, a major European investment bank, which led a financing round, taking around half of the investment with previous investors taking the rest. DiBcom has now raised $80 million since it was founded, focusing on DVB-T and DVB-H chips. Other investors included 3i, Cipio Partners, Convergent Capital, Cr’dit Agricole Private Equity, Intel Capital, Partech International, SGAM Alternative Investments, UMC Capital, and WI Harper.
Vodafone and Nokia have just issued a policy paper that calls for a new regulatory framework to encourage financial transactions through mobile phones, entitled ‘The Transformational Potential of M-Transactions.’ The report says that operators shouldn’t have to become banks to offer financial services but should have access to the banking clearing system directly. The aim is to replace retail banks and automatic teller machines and cash, in third world countries, with mobile phone payments systems acting as money, an idea we’ve heard about forever, but so far no-one has done much about it.
Advertising on both audio and video streaming media, so on web video and web radio, and web based gaming, is forecast to reach $1.37 billion this year, up 38% over 2006, according to AccuStream iMedia Research. The company estimates that there are up to 2.7 billion streams or download views per month inside professional, ad supported or free content areas averaging 1.5 billion pre roll ad places. This will rise by a further 28% this coming year, with in game video ads growing faster than the overall market.
UK based Inuk Networks which offers free IPTV to students, this week added a new premium offering. For premium, read paid for, at the princely sum round £10 a month ($20). The channel will include live Barclays Premier League soccer games from the Setanta Sports and 20 entertainment, music and sports channels. Inuk already offers Freewire with 30 ad supported TV channels
Total HD, the Warner Brothers system for putting both a Blu-ray readable film file and a HD DVD file on a single disk has been pushed back until 2008 the company said this week, probably to find out if it’s really necessary, given that the HD DVD format doesn’t look to survive that long.