IPTV, and more recently, cable and mobile DRM supplier, Verimatrix is still burning cash and has raised an additional $5 million of capital which it says it needs to keep a large number of customer engagements alive. Verimatrix says it has over 80 global pay-TV deployments, and earlier this year, passed the three million mark for set tops using its decryption software.
The rumor mill would be expected to com up with more Intel chips for Apple, this time suggesting that its next generation iPhone will use the Moorestown chip, the second attempt by Intel to build its way into the mobile and UMPC markets. The rumor came from DigiTimes, which says the Moorestown will not be with us before 2009 offering ultra low power levels.
Telefonica and Nokia this week said they would work together to promote adoption of Internet services on handsets. The collaboration includes areas such as menu customization, technology and billing co-operation and Nokia will customize its Multimedia Menu to make room for Telefonica services, while Telefonica will allow access to Nokia new OVI services through its own Multimedia Menu.
The WiMedia Alliance this week has completed compliance testing on 12 separate silicon platforms from 8 different companies as being UltraWideband compliant, including Alereon, Artimi, Intel, Realtek, Staccato, Tzero, WiQuest and Wisair. These devices will now be marketed into a wide range of short distance, high speed, wireless devices, such as set tops and TV sets and can offer speeds of up to 480 Mbps.
Both Portugal Telecom and Telefonica in Chile have added themselves to the growing list of telcos using the Ruckus Wireless MediaFlex Smart Wi-Fi system as a basis for IPTV distribution around the home. Smart Wi-Fi sets up multiple wi-fi paths and arranges packet resends so that it creates a reliable video transmission system compared to ordinary wi-fi. Ruckus has deals with telecom operators in the US, Hong Kong, Belgium, Singapore, Chile, Italy, Ireland, Czech Republic, Finland, Estonia, Slovenia and now Portugal.
Vonage Holdings agreed this week to pay $80 million to end the patent dispute that has been running through the courts with Sprint Nextel, paying to license the relevant VoIP technology. It will pay $35 million for past use and $40 million for future use, plus a $5 million prepayment. This payment will now replace the court imposed damages of $69.5 million plus 5% of its future revenue. It still has to settle or appeal a similar case it has with Verizon where it was ordered to pay $58 million in damages plus a 5.5% royalty fee.
TiVo subscribers can now listen the RealNetworks Rhapsody music service on their televisions, the two companies said this week. Financial terms were not disclosed. Both services require a monthly subscription fee of around $13 a month, and TiVo subscribers will receive a free one-month trial of Rhapsody. TiVo customers will be able to search for music on their TV, browse Rhapsody’s most popular tunes, or listen to thousands of radio channels.
AOL will cut 2,000 jobs in a restructuring according to details shown to Reuters last week. That’s about 20% of the workforce and they will come evenly across operations in the US and Europe. AOL has missed advertising targets, which has led to investors calling for it to be sold by parent Time Warner. Its response has been to acquire new advertising operations to fill out its offerings, including Tacoda, Lightningcast and Adtech.
Nokia said it is now starting to ship the 8GB version of its N95 multimedia handset with a 2.8 inch QVGA display and will offer it pre-loaded with the latest Sony owned Spiderman movie in Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
Revenue from standard set-top boxes will be in decline by 2012 as DTH, IPTV, and Digital Terrestrial set tops saturate and set tops come under pressure from two-way digital-cable ready TVs, residential gateways, media centres, and even video capabilities on gaming systems, says a report this week from ABI Research. Set top makers will respond by adding new features, more hard-disk space, DVD players, DVD burners, bundled home-audio systems and improved EPG design and many will also introduce hybrids where a single set top handles multiple video sources.
Broadcom has introduced a single chip HSUPA processor, the BCM21551, effectively a 3G phone on a single chip incorporating CMOS RF, Bluetooth, FM Radio, FM Transmitter and cut in 65nm geometry. It says this will lead to devices with very long battery life, and new features like video and image upload and download, live video conferencing and multiband radio and five Megapixel cameras. Prices are around $23 in large quantities, available now.
Cable Europe, representing the cable TV industry in Europe, said last week that cable TV operators in Europe added two million new digital TV customers in the first half of 2007, which will take the number to over 16 million digital TV customers by year-end 2007, making it 60% up on last year, something of a recent record. In total, cable networks in Europe reach 100 million homes.
Virgin Mobile in the US is a very different company from Virgin Media in the UK although they have some common shareholders, and it just went public in an IPO selling 27.5 million shares at $15 each, raising $382 million for the company and $30 million for some existing shareholders. It will now trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol VM.
Hitachi says that it has shrunk the read write heads in its perpendicular disk drives to a record low, allowing it to build drives holding four times as much data. The technology is called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistive (CPP-GMR) and Hitachi says it will come onstream during 2009. The breakthrough was announced at the Tokyo International Forum and Hitachi said it has solved many of the signal to noise ratio problems that will allow it to come to market. It will mean PC drives with 4 terabytes, laptops with 1 terabyte, but Hitachi gives no timeframe for mp3 players with this technology in.
Sprint-Nextel has launched Sprint Exclusive Entertainment (SEE), its own TV channels for short form mobile content, and says that it is the only US wireless carrier to produce its own network of original TV programming. Sprint has a commitment to work with many of the larger US cable operators to bring long form content to the handset, in the near future. SEE content has an average length of just two minutes and focuses on sports, music and entertainment news.
Google’s YouTube has finally rolled out a system to help prevent copyrighted materials being left on its user generated content system, but it requires each content owned to file their own copy of the work, and index or fingerprint it. The owner of the content can then block material, or opt to monetize it where it is, through ad sales. It may be just enough to get the content world off Google’s back and quash several high profile legal actions, but it still requires some considerable effort on their part. The system is now just in beta.