Most voices that bothered this week to comment on Yahoo’s negotiations with News Corp made the point that this is really just about getting Microsoft to make a better offer. The logic of putting a network like MySpace, which is immature in terms of advertising appeal, with Yahoo, which is weak in its ability to sell all of its inventory, is just making the problem bigger. MySpace, we are sure over time will beef up its advertising sales, but it has only been taking advertising for a few years, so it cannot have the appeal for Yahoo of working with Microsoft Ad Center. The funniest outcome would be if MySpace merged with Yahoo, taking 20% of the company for its troubles and then Microsoft went ahead with its proxy fight anyway, and bought them both.
T-Mobile has kicked out Google as its Europe-wide search partner and given the deal to Yahoo, which would have significantly moved its share price if it had not been for the fact that Microsoft already did that with its hostile takeover bid. The move will shift 90 million of T-Mobile’s global 113 million cellular customers away from Google, although it is only a default setting, and many will just go and look for Google search anyway.
Nielsen this week acquired Audience Analytics, which brings with it it’s Audience Watch software, which will help process, integrate, analyze and report large quantities of audience measurement data. Nielsen says the Audience Watch software will become the primary delivery mechanism for the company’s Nielsen DigitalPlus product line which will provide analytics on tuning and interactive television usage based on set top box data, as well as measurement of video on demand transactions.
Intel’s European offices were initially raided in July 2005 to provide the European Union with enough evidence to bring its AMD inspired anti-trust case. Now that it has effectively said that the case against Intel is proven, it is incongruous that it is back using the same process, as it if still needs to collect evidence. No decision on penalties has yet been made. Last time the raids were directed at Intel and hardware manufacturers, this week the raids were aimed at Intel plus retailers, including Gemany’s Media Markt, and the UK’s DSG group, which owns Dixons, Currys, PC City and PC World, presumably implying that the retailers have been given incentives to not stock PCs with AMD chips in them.
The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) representing ISPs in the UK has come out vocally against the proposal by the UK government to make them responsible for taking action over customers who pirate content. The ISPA argument is that data protection legislation prevents ISPs from even looking at the content of the packets sent. Naturally the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) sees things very differently. The UK move follows French legislation being readied along the same lines.
Various reports, including CNET and Tech Crunch this week revealed that Snocap, started by Shawn Fanning, founder of the original Napster, has been sold to Imeem, the social networking site. Snocap pioneered a digital fingerprinting technology for content protection, which was used by Imeem. Snocap was built with $10 million from Conway, Morgenthaler Ventures and Walden had distribution deals with MySpace as well. The technology tracked how many times a song is streamed on a web site so that the site can allocate a portion of advertising dollars to each of the record labels.
Sparkplay Media said this week it has secured $4.25 million in financing from Redpoint Ventures and Prism Ventureworks. The company plans to use the capital to expand development of its browser-based massively multiplayer 3D games platform and of its first MMO, Earth Eternal. Previously the business has been self financed.
There was speculation at Mobile World Congress last week that Mexican operator America Movil is planning a move to Spain, to counter the long term invasion of South America by Telefonica. The deal hinges on partnering with TeliaSonera’s Spanish operator Yoigo, as a starting point in Europe. The company has not yet confirmed that such talks are going on.
Ericsson has launched the Multimedia Communication Suite (MCS) ‘ which is a new interface to allow internet services on handsets, and it will come to market on new Sony Ericsson devices including the W760. Consumers will access services from the address book through an interface which includes presence functionality using avatars and photos. The system is built on the IMS architecture and is aligned with the industry initiative Rich Communication Suite (RCS) for standardized IMS service features, backed by Orange, Telecom Italia, Telef’nica, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
Harmonic this week said that its Rhozet Carboon Coder video transcoding system will support Panasonic’s high-performance AVC-Intra high definition (HD) compression technology. Rhozet Carbon Coder will provide real-time transcoding of HD material using the AVC-Intra codec as a standard feature. The AVC-Intra compression scheme is gaining traction to send HD or near HD video over the internet.
Hathway the Indian provider of digital cable services, has chosen NDS XTV DVR technology to launch advanced digital TV services. NDS says that it already has more than 10.4 million DVRs designed to its XTV architecture around the world. Hathway is the media, entertainment, networking and broadband Internet arm of the Rajan Raheja Group.
BSkyB says that it will, after all, appeal the decision taken by the UK Competition Commission to force it to sell its 17.9% of ITV. The Commission said that the deal created a merger situation and was prejudicial to competition. The move will prolong the uncertainty over ITV shares and the £343 million write down that Sky put on its books during its last quarter, once it knew it had to sell most of them.
Nielsen in the US says that there are more than 13 million households there that only receive analogue TV broadcasts and says that they are currently unprepared to make the transition to all digital broadcasting, scheduled for February 18, 2009. Nielsen says a further 6 million homes have one TV set that would stop working. But then again, that’s what the US NTIA digital-to-analog converter box voucher system for $40 per home is all about.
Macrovision has sold off its Software Business Unit in a cash transaction worth around $200 million. As far as we can see this is Macrovision getting out of its Flexnet and InstallShield businesses, which are tools for installing applications packages and ensuring that enterprise licenses only have as many seats using those licenses as they claim. That means that after its acquisition of GemStar, Macrovision will be entirely focused on video and audio content protection and presentation services. Macrovision paid $96 million for the InstallShield business back in 2004 and bought the Flexnet from Globetrotter in 2000 for an undisclosed sum, thought to be around $12 million. The buying company is Thoma Cressey Bravo, a private equity investment firm.
MultiMedia Intelligence issued a report this week predicting that content identification technologies like digital watermarking and fingerprinting will become a $500 million globally by 2012. Key applications will be Internet and broadcast content monitoring, copyright control, content protection, forensics, and interactive advertising. It also says that companies like Cinea, Philips, Thomson, Verimatrix and Widevine will use it in IPTV and that semiconductor companies will embed systems into set-tops including STMicro, Texas Instruments and Broadcom.
Irish sports content owner Setanta Sports, created when its two founders wanted to watch their favorite sports team during the World cup, is considering taking bids, after an offer to buy it came unsolicited from a European player. BT, ITV and ESPN have now made bids, with ESPN as favorite. The company is famous for building up a huge portfolio of sports video rights under the noses of the UK’s leader, Sky Sports, often taking popular sports rights no-one thought they wanted. Goldman Sachs has been appointed as an advisor.
UK student TV network Inuk Networks, which offers IPTV through the multicast routers at most UK universities, says it has now signed up
more than 40,000 students to its Freewire TV IPTV service. It claims that this is the largest IPTV service in the UK, although Homechoice has a similar number of customers which pay for its service. Freewire is mostly free, and paid for by advertising, with some sports rights, including Setanta Sports costing £10 a month. Inuk says that Freewire has been rolled to more than 100,000 student bedrooms at forty universities in the UK, with 40,000 of them registering for service.