Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
With Reliance Communications (RCOM) poised to exit, the Indian mobile market is as turbulent as ever, and new entrant Reliance Jio (RJio) is biting at the heels of the country’s second and third MNOs, Vodafone and Idea Cellular. According to figures from the regulator, TRAI, RJio gained a net total of 9.7m subscribers in June, to take its total to 215m, just seven quarters after the launch of its low cost, 4G-only services in September 2016. As of the end of June, its market share stands at 18.8%, behind leader Bharti Airtel on 30%, Vodafone on 19.43% and Idea on 19.24%. The other operators are state-owned BSNL, which has almost 10% share, and three minnows – the other state carrier,…
The USA and China are locked in battle on many fronts, and 5G is one of them. The trade and security wars will harm mobile vendors from both countries, but will not stop the new networks getting built. In that race, it seems China has the edge on its rival, having spent more $24bn more on 5G-ready infrastructure than the USA to date. But this is not just about deep pockets – it is about the approach to network ownership. In China, a relatively young market with plenty of growth is encouraging creative thinking about network sharing and co-investment in 5G by interested non-telecoms parties (as with the stakes taken in China Unicom by web and industrial corporations). Meanwhile, Verizon…
Just days after rival broadcaster ITV announced it was tinkering with artificial intelligence for personalized cover art, the BBC revealed plans of its own – taking the technology to the next level by tasking it with production responsibilities. It would be easy to say the project spells doom and gloom for production teams and suppliers of production tools alike, but the truth is the technology isn’t about to single handedly produce the next Game of Thrones. A 100% AI-developed program looks some way away from existence if early details on the BBC’s foray are anything to go by. Founded in 1922, the BBC has one of the most extensive content archives on the planet and the plan is to harness…
Another victim has been claimed in what has been a torrid couple of years for the virtual reality market, with Google and Canadian cinema chain Imax the most recent players to admit defeat, deciding to can their joint VR camera project after only two years. Unsurprisingly, Google has since claimed responsibility for pulling the plug – a decision we can certainly empathize with as both movie theaters and VR projects have been burning cash for fun instead of meeting expectations of providing fun. In Google’s words, all development of an Imax cinema-grade VR camera has been put on pause while it continues to “review the viability of our pilot,” in a statement to Variety, when what Google really means is…
// M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Cox Automotive is launching its Mobility Solutions Group, focused on mobility-aaS, fleet management, and a new acquisition – Clutch, a subscription management platform. eZLO has acquired MiOS and its Vera parent, a smart home service provider the eZLO plans to tightly integrate with its OEM smart home device offerings. Orange used Vera’s MiOS in its now ended Smart Home service. // Forecasts, Surveys. Reports, & Blue-Sky Thinking // The IoT Medical Devices market will be worth $63.43bn by 2023, according to MarketsandMarkets, growing from $20.59bn in 2018 at a CAGR of 25.2%. // Networks, Protocols, & Wireless // Samsung has announced the Exynos Modem 5100, claiming to have produced the first fully 3GPP Release 15…
UK regulator Ofgem has granted Limejump permission to participate in the Balancing Mechanism Market (BMM), using its distributed Virtual Power Plant (VPP). This will be the first aggregated system to compete here, going up against conventional power generation assets with a VPP, assembled from multiple smaller generation systems working as one. The BMM is worth around £1bn annually, and typically consists of the ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers and some other larger platers. Limejump is hoping to use its system to create an aggregated VPP, via incentivizing owners of solar panels, batteries, or even wind turbines, to join the Limejump platform. That model lets Limejump act like a conventional generation firm, even though it is radically different. “This move means that…
The fall back to earth just experienced by Quanergy, a maker of solid state lidar devices for self-driving, has widely been attributed to its recent absence from the list of partners working with Daimler for an autonomous commuter service in Silicon Valley. It seems this omission has savaged Quanergy’s valuation, ahead of its planned IPO. This was certainly a set back because Daimler’s biggest brand Mercedes had been Quanergy’s first major customer and partner, starting in 2014 before propelling the company towards an apparently hugely overinflated valuation of $1.5bn. This was followed by the two companies showing a Mercedes E350 sedan outfitted with Quanergy’s lidar devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2015. Yet we think…
Car rental has all the hallmarks of a legacy industry ripe for disruption, or even destruction, at the hands of emerging connected vehicle and autonomous driving technologies. It has become highly consolidated, with over 80% of the world market ultimately controlled by three US giants, Avis, Hertz and Enterprise, although under several different brands. It has also become hostage to vested interests determined to stifle emergent competition, with airports making billions of dollars a year renting lots to hire firms which in turn have become accustomed to easy revenues from this presence. With a dominant market position, these giants have less incentive to provide good customer service and it is no surprise that car rental as a whole has one…
Samsung Electronics America reentered the mesh WiFi market this week by adding technology from Plume, the start-up formed by ex-Atheros employees, to a new line of network products within the SmartThings smart home suite – essentially a rebrand of last year’s Connect Home mesh devices. As a key investor and long-term pusher of Plume within its own footprint, the move screams of Comcast getting the economies of scale that Samsung brings, and a partner for Plume that has good penetration of Asia. Samsung says the new network system, comprising three WiFi “routers” (Access Points) with a built in SmartThings smart home hub, uses AI-based mesh WiFi optimization technology from Plume. There was no mention of Samsung’s AI-powered digital assistant Bixby…
The Kudelski Group had a not entirely unexpected fall in revenues for the half year 2018, down to $446.1 million from $497.2 million last year, and made losses of some $36.5 million. Kudelski is best known for Nagra content security, including forensic watermarking firm Nexguard and its Conax CAS subsidiary, but it also has a set top business, and new ventures in IoT security and Cybersecurity. This week it confirmed that it has sold its SmarDTV Conditional Access Module (CAM) and Set-Top Box businesses to an affiliate of Neotion SA, but it is not yet recorded in these figures. About $28 million of the loss was down to restructuring costs, and before these the losses were just $2.2 million (that…
“It’s important for consumers and operators alike to understand that today, piracy and cybercrime are not necessarily separate threats as they will often come from the same origin,” is the opening gambit from Irdeto’s 2018 Global Consumer Piracy Threat report. The Dutch digital security firm made headlines this week after highlighting how the dark web serves as a buzzing marketplace of OTT video passwords – going on the cheap for an average $8.71 – while suggesting little can be done to extinguish the problem. Missing from the report, however, is the offer of any solution to the caveat of the lines between piracy and cybercrime blurring, which is by no means exclusive to Irdeto but a trend across the entire…
Formation of a new industry body always begs the question why it was needed now and did not exist before and that certainly applies to the newly formed Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). It has been established by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the Linux Foundation to foster open source software development in the movie and video production businesses. It already has strong backing with premier founding members including Cisco, Google Cloud, Intel, Animal Logic, Blue Sky Studios, DreamWorks, Walt Disney Studios and Weta Digital, who are a combination of major content creators and video infrastructure vendors. The focus is on animation, audio and visual effects, for which 84% of studios already use open source software,…
Nissan has thrown in the towel on its electric vehicle (EV) battery project, and has opted to sell its Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) wing to Envision, a Chinese firm that manages over 100GW of energy assets, using its EnOS software. For Nissan’s EVs, including the very popular Leaf, LG Chem will now be the supplier of the battery units. The price isn’t being disclosed, but Nissan is retaining a minority stake in AESC. Envision is looking forward to leveraging those batteries in its energy deployments. It currently says it connects over 50mn smart devices, managing them with EnOS. These devices include energy storage units, solar, wind, EVs, and home energy management systems (HEMS). As for more direct plans, Envision…
As happens so often nowadays, Nokia and Ericsson could only watch in envy as Huawei posted yet another strong set of results. Ericsson’s quarter had shown some small shoots of recovery, while Nokia’s was lacklustre. By contrast, their Chinese rival – despite being subject to mounting suspicions and trade tensions with the US and other countries – turned in 15% year-on-year revenue growth for the first six months of 2018. That took total sales to RMB325.7bn ($47.7bn), and the growth rate was the same as for the first half of 2017, even though Huawei is virtually excluded from the US equipment market and has been finding barriers raised against it in Australia and some other markets too. It also saw…
Autonomous driving will never succeed without the development of largescale underlying infrastructure, including physical components such as parking and charging points, as well as mobile networks and regulatory aspects determining vehicle behavior. Surprisingly, little thought has been given to developing a coherent infrastructure integrating these diverse aspects, never mind how this may change the way people travel and interact with public transportation including rail. As a result, there is little consensus over what the intended consequences of autonomous driving should be, nor the unintended consequences that might result. A key point is that as autonomous driving unfolds it is quite likely that the infrastructure will encourage centralized control, under pressure for greater speed without compromising safety alongside efficient routing of…
Asia Pacific provided the goods this week with a couple of significant announcements to fill the summer vacation lull felt at news desks globally. Japanese radio station Nippon Broadcasting System has made a major AI-powered voice technology investment, while Chinese OTT video giant iQiyi revealed plans for a dedicated sports division – basically signaling game over for most competing sports platforms in China. It won’t shock readers to hear that Japan is one of the more advanced markets in voice technologies, with incumbent operator NTT Docomo expected to be a player in the global voice assistant market – offering an Alexa-esque assistant as part of its Smart Life series of technologies. KDDI is also involved with a TiVo-based voice remote,…
Revenue security technology vendor Irdeto has urged the pay TV industry to put pressure on the big payment platforms in the fight to contain rampant video streaming piracy. We can be forgiven for a little déjà vu having heard such calls made loudly and repeatedly back to the beginnings of online music piracy, almost two decades ago. It is depressing that after progress had been made recruiting the major payment platforms including the big three of Visa, Mastercard and PayPal to the cause of anti-piracy over music, they have been sucked back into the vortex of stream piracy by the seductions of increasingly professional operators. PayPal in particular will be disappointed to have its nose rubbed in the dirt by…
Back in February the Netherlands based competition regulator the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) put out a draft ruling which would require VodafoneZiggo to unbundle access to its broadband, in the same way that telco KPN has already unbundled such access. This week Cable Europe issued a swinging attack on the statement, describing it as “anachronistic,” aiming the criticism at the European Commission . In th end it is the Commission which has to decide where it stands on unbundling at the local loop or similar strategies, such as VULA access. In the past cable has positioned itself as an ally to the European Commission in meetings its super-broadband targets. Right the way across Europe the history is straightforward…
The USA’s regulator, the FCC, has announced rules for the upcoming auctions of 28 GHz and 24 GHz millimeter wave spectrum, and proposed next steps in getting more high frequency bands – 37 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz – ready for a single auction in the second half of 2019. The FCC had previously rejected proposals to offer all five bands in a single auction to accelerate 5G progress. It said the 39 GHz band is fragmented, and to get it ready for auction would delay availability of the others, especially 24 GHz. The first auction will start on November 14 and will offer 2 x 425 MHz of 28 GHz spectrum on a county-by-county basis. This will be…