Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The GPU Technology Conference (GTC) was the stage on which Nvidia delivered a pile of news announcements, including a new GPU (Volta), a GPU cloud computing offering, robot testing platform, and business partnerships with Toyota and SAP. Following some healthy Q1 results, the company continues its barnstorming progress, while its closest rival, AMD, continues to flounder, and Intel eyes its data center incursion nervously. But the silicon industry is already looking at the next generations of chips that might power increasingly complex compute tasks. Google has its Tensor Processing Unit, an extremely optimized chip for machine-learning functions, as well as plugging away on quantum computing chips too, and Intel is still plugging away with its immense R&D budgets – dedicated…
Linius Technologies is pitching its intelligent content technology to pay TV providers as way to deliver personalized advertising and video content to viewers on the TV set. Linius has developed and patented what it calls a virtualized video engine (VVE), which it debuted at IBC last year. The technology is able to manipulate video files between the source of the content and its destination, by reducing the video to its data components, and then re-assembling the video to be played back for the viewer. By opening up the video file, operators are able to modify or manipulate that video as it’s being transported to the end user. It claims to do this in near real time, introducing minimal latency into…
A growth in international SVoD distribution drove Disney’s first quarter operating income for its Studio Entertainment sector up by 21% to $656 million, but despite seeing subscriber gains on streaming platforms, these were not enough to offset snowballing cable losses – spearheaded by ESPN’s turmoil. Disney is famously not a business to shy away from embracing OTT video, but so far the world’s largest entertainment company has not been particularly successful in its attempts. However, CEO Bob Iger hinted that Disney has some big plans for OTT going on behind closed doors, stating in this week’s earnings call that there is a focus on expanding ESPN’s mobile presence – looking to build on a huge surge that has resulted in…
We have to go back to the old mainframe days to find out what happens to technology monoliths which have, like Ericsson, passed their sell buy date. They cannot go bankrupt, and perhaps no-one wants to buy them. Ericsson is in a kind of double bind. It needs to report increased sales with customers buying from it once again, or at least not a further collapse in revenue. And at the same time it has to cut costs in order to lift profits, and has isolated some key markets to exit, such as video and media. Investors will forgive it, if it falls out of the TV market, and its revenue only falls in that sector. But not if it…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. M&A, Strategies, Alliances Actility has acquired Abeeway, a geolocation specialist, adding the startup to its LPWAN platform offering. No price was given, but it follows the LoRa advocate’s $75m round. Whirlpool is acquiring Yummly, a personalized recipe recommendation app that Whirlpool is planning on integrating into its smart home systems, with a base of 20m registered users. Fulham has acquired CNS, the creator of the EliteDali smart lighting system, planning to integrate the Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) tech into its hardware portfolio. PrecyseTech is buying Agylytyx, a cloud-based asset tracking SaaS provider, and plans to integrate the technology into its IIoT logistics offerings. UEI is…
Amazon has expanded its UK-based drone research center, creating 400 new positions to fill in a week that followed a ground-based delivery drone trial between courier firm Hermes and Starship Technologies. In the US, Walmart is apparently braced to follow Amazon’s lead in order-placing buttons, but are these new technologies just marketing gimmicks? Well, as you’ll be able to tell by the slightly clickbaity opening, they do have their uses. Amazon’s Dash buttons are perhaps the least viable of this new crop of devices that are trying to remove any friction between a customer and their purchasing decisions, but faster or more convenient delivery is a sure-fire way to enable more compulsive online purchases. Outside of the retail space, enterprises,…
Startup Voltus has grabbed 400MW worth of energy management contracts since opening its doors in June last year – spread across all major wholesale markets in the US, and a significant win for the new entrant. CEO Gregg Dixon described how Voltus had success targeting smaller entities previously underserved by its competitors. The pace at which the company has been able to attract customers should turn heads and encourage new rival offerings of a similar nature, but the big boys aren’t going to take this lying down. Demand response is a way for the grid operators to reduce the load on the grid by incentivizing users to reduce their current usage in exchange for payment or credit, usually at peak…
Google has committed to a showdown with supercomputers, aiming to prove the capabilities of its in-house quantum computing silicon. The new design is aiming to establish quantum supremacy, and establish that the new computing architecture can trounce the most powerful arrays of traditional silicon – opening up a new field to be embraced by emerging AI and machine-learning (ML) technologies. So-called because of their use of quantum mechanical properties, the new chips threaten to outperform the most powerful supercomputers, potentially in power packages that could be run from batteries. While they have huge value in scientific research and experiments, quantum computers have picked up a little infamy for their potential ability to render current methods of digital encryption redundant. To…
The US arm of Korean start up Titan Platform, a content platform provider and hardware maker, revealed to Riot’s sister-publication, Faultline Online Reporter, that a major US telco is investigating the potential launch of a home gateway with a SIM card – based on the belief that millennials are cutting their broadband subscriptions. There is reportedly a huge push happening in the US, where millennials would prefer to have an extra $5 a month fee attached to an unlimited mobile data plan by dropping a SIM into a home gateway, rather than pay full wedge for a broadband package. According to the CEO of Titan Platform US, Adrian Sexton, his company is currently in discussions with one of the…
Amazon has unveiled the Echo Look, a $200 camera powered by its Alexa AI, which it is pitching at style-conscious fashion fans looking for a more personalized shopping experience inside Amazon’s gargantuan retail marketplace. While an immediate threat to bricks and mortar, the device is the first step towards a video-enabled smart home focused Echo – a device type that Apple is now rumored to be developing too. The Siri-powered speaker is rumored to house Apple’s rather flaky digital assistant, as well all the required HomeKit functionality to let it run as a smart home hub. Rumored to be in the prototype stage, the Apple device would be its first new product category launch since the Apple Watch. Rumors suggest…
The US arm of Korean start up Titan Platform, a content platform provider and hardware maker, revealed to Faultline Online Reporter this week that a major US telco is investigating the potential launch of a home gateway with a SIM card – based on the belief that millennials are cutting their broadband subscriptions. There is reportedly a huge push happening in the US, where millennials would prefer to have an extra $5 a month fee attached to an unlimited mobile data plan by dropping a SIM into a home gateway, rather than pay full wedge for a broadband package. According to the CEO of Titan Platform US, Adrian Sexton, his company is currently in discussions with one of the big…
Just as Facebook’s video ad business begins to approach its first plateau (well hardly a plateau, given that it came out with revenues up 51% this week), artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) are coming together nicely for the company’s next venture in social advertising. Facebook has revealed a slew of new projects it’s been working on that’ll position the social network to take targeted advertising to a whole new level. AR today is all about the smartphone – take Pokemon Go or Snapchat, for example – and so too is Facebook. The company is hoping to capitalize on a few trends that are beginning to intersect at the smartphone: AR technology, AI computing, and the growing importance of…
The architecture choice for many telcos is no longer ‘to virtualize or not’. The big decisions are which network elements to virtualize first, and when; and whether to convert physical systems to virtual, or start from scratch with a cloud-native strategy. And having decided that, what approach to take – one with its roots in the traditional enterprise market, like VMware; one coming from the telco world, probably under the auspices of ETSI; or a ‘pure’ open source option. These three choices are starting to drive faultlines through the nascent telco virtualization and SDN (software-defined networking) market. At the edge of the network, which will become increasingly important as IoT devices proliferate, the three camps are increasingly visible. A new…
HOLIDAY NOTICE: Please note that Wireless Watch will take its annual spring break next week so there will be a combined issue for the weeks commencing May 8 and May 15, to be published on Monday May 15. Voice-activated speakers and digital assistants may just seem like the modern, more annoying version of the old Microsoft paperclip, continually offering help and reminders where they are not needed. But while Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Google Home/Now and Amazon Echo/Alexa may have a long way to go, we will look back on them as the advance guard in a crucial battle – to define and control the next generation of the mobile and web experience, on the long route to the Tactile…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances BICS is acquiring TeleSign for $230m, adding its authentication and mobile identity services to BICS’ cloud communication platform, claiming this makes the first global CPaaS. Element Data has acquired PV Cube, a Seattle startup specializing in AI and ML, which Element Data plans to incorporate into its project to build the first cognitive decision engine. iDevices has been acquired by Hubbell, a manufacturer of electrical and electronic products with $3.5bn annual revenues, looking to market iDevice’s smart home portfolio. The Thread Group and CABA have announced a collaboration partnership to share and foster smart home and building approaches, to further their mutual goals. STMicro has announced strong Q1 results, as well as new executive appointments and a…
The Linux Foundation has launched the EdgeX Foundry, an open source project that aims to build a common open framework for IoT edge-computing and promote such an ecosystem. With some 50 founding members, we would normally be singing the praises of the project – but there’s already an industry group dedicated to tackling this problem, and it’s called the OpenFog Consortium. The OpenFog group recently unveiled its new Reference Architecture document, which is essentially a framework for managing emerging networks that blend centralized cloud processing with distributed network-edge compute functions. It looks like there’s considerable common ground between the two groups, and a cynic would note that this launch is an excellent example of the IoT getting another unnecessary group…
The deadline has now passed for comment on US plans to mandate DSRC (dedicated short range communications) technology in vehicles to improve road safety. But the responses to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) proposals reveal the splits over standardization in the connected car arena. The cellular community wants to push Cellular-V2X, based on LTE-V, the specialized variant of LTE for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. But there is a divide between the cellular approach and the 802.11ap, WiFi-based alternative, which offers all the pros and cons of an unlicensed spectrum solution (deployable by non-spectrum owners, but at risk of unreliable performance). In the US, the situation is slightly different. DSRC is based on 802.11p but has its…
US satellite and internet radio broadcaster SiriusXM has acquired connected automotive dongle maker Automatic Labs for an undisclosed sum, marking SiriusXM’s entrance into the telematics hardware space to build on its existing connected vehicle applications. Given that SiriusXM has a huge subscriber base of 31.6m, this deal has great potential for Automatic’s dongles, but it comes at a time where newer vehicles are beginning to integrate the telematics functionality directly into the vehicle hardware, meaning that dongle makers like Automatic won’t be needed to serve new cars – confining them to older vehicles and third-party integrations. This is exactly where Automatic could fit in to SiriusXM’s plans, as the Liberty Media owned company runs a Pre-Owned Program in partnership with…
At NAB this week US encoding firm Haivision and best of breed ABR Packager supplier Wowza, have formed an alliance to support a Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) for video and to get more people on board they are open sourcing it via the not quite so widely used LGPL license, a move which allows providers to create paid extensions alongside free uses. SRT is something introduced by Haivision 3 years ago, a protocol over and above UDP which allows for both packet resends and different levels of forward error correction, depending upon the condition of the network. In essence, it is about allowing low latency streaming across the open internet. There have been many of these attempts over the years…
Arris and Charter’s joint cloud-based technology arm, ActiveVideo, says it has landed a deal at Japanese operator J:COM (Jupiter Telecommunications), to virtualize VoD functions in its set top environment for pay TV subscribers – claiming this is the first deployment of the technology in Japan. Yet we noticed that J:COM has been on ActiveVideo’s customer list since before its takeover by Arris and Charter two years ago, so there were immediate doubts that this week’s press release was actually proclaiming anything new. Arris confirmed this with Faultline Online Reporter, saying that there was already a deal in place for ActiveVideo at J:COM, but this week’s announcement is for deployment at scale. we understand the deployment is for 2 million homes.…