Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Electrolux has acquired Anova, the maker of a smart oven aimed at consumers looking for sous-vide quality. The deal is $115m cash, with an additional $135m based on performance. The IoT Cybersecurity Alliance has been launched by AT&T, IBM, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, and Trustonic – the clue to its focus is in the name. Ovo has acquired VCharge, with the UK energy supplier targeting the smart grid developer for its advanced grid balancing platform and algorithms. It is Ovo’s first acquisition. Taser has acquired Dextro and Fossil’s Misfit machine-vision researchers, and bundled the two into Axon AI, a new group targeting AI-powered public safety solutions, including video analytics and data integration. Forecasts, Reports, and Blue…
The past week has seen two announcements appear that illustrate the cellular industry’s attempts to diversify into automotive applications. With next-gen technologies as a platform, Ericsson, SK Telecom, and BMW demonstrated a 28GHz beamforming technique that could push a 3.6Gbps stream to a moving vehicle, and Nokia, Alphabet, and Qualcomm exploring the potential of a private 3.5GHz LTE network. Broadly speaking, next-gen vehicles are going to have a number of different wireless requirements. First off, in-car media consumption will require a data pipe to provide audio and video content to in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, as well as the packets to power the IVI’s navigation systems. As such, the MNOs are in the midst of trying to prove to automakers that…
American Family Insurance has recruited the help of US telematics firm Automatic to fit policy holders’ vehicles with on-board diagnostics (OBD) dongles to collect and monitor driver data – with the primary benefit of lower insurance costs for consumers. This looks like a pro-consumer move on the surface, but in the long run, insurance players will have unprecedented access to a vast quantity of driver data, which they will almost certainly use to their advantage – manipulating this valuable data to reduce the number of claims payouts. This may come across as an alarmist view, yet the insurance industry is already in the process of transitioning to this type of data-driven business model, and this week’s deal is just one…
Network-edge evangelist, the OpenFog Consortium, has unveiled its Reference Architecture design, aimed at providing a universal framework to enable the IoT, 5G, and AI applications that are coming to the fore. Calling it a significant first step towards creating the necessary standards needed to manage these multi-faceted apps, OpenFog is looking to becoming the center-point in IoT data interoperability. By the sounds of it, the new Reference Architecture is going to act as a foundation, on which to build new standards and approaches – meaning that other standards and industry organizations are going to have to get on board with the approach. However, the IoT is an enabling factor in many other potentially lucrative applications, and so there’s a strong…
Citizens of European Union (EU) member states will soon be able to access their OTT video subscriptions in any country within the Union, thanks to a content portability agreement reached between the European Parliament and European Commission (EC) this week, as part of its Digital Single Market modernization. Broadcasters and media firms who hold premium content rights were up in arms about the proposal several months ago, citing that it would weaken trade deals for content rights on a country by country basis. However, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) then approved the EC’s proposal changes in December, which now state that paid online TV services will have to adhere to the rules, while free services such as catch-up portals offered…
Extreme Reach is a software platform that helps marketers navigate the complex world of digital advertising. The company has launched a new platform that Extreme Reach promises will help simplify and streamline the workflow processes of distributing an ad across myriad platforms, devices and screens that consumers now use to access media. “Our mission is to help major brands and agencies execute their video campaign against any screen that they like,” said John Roland, co-founder and CEO of Extreme Reach. “That includes linear TV as well as video on demand and programmatic TV, digital video, programmatic video and even OTT. Extreme’s platform can execute campaigns across any screen and device.” The company is a major player in the space. Its…
The US cash cow of linear TV – American football – isn’t delivering quite as much cash. The US’s National Football League (NFL) had one of its worst seasons in terms of ratings during the 2016 season that led up to Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is considered one of the biggest must-see live events for television each year, but the game last weekend didn’t deliver the kind of blow-out ratings that television networks have seen in previous years. In fact, the 2017 Super Bowl delivered the lowest ratings for the game in the last four years. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has been perplexed by the slump in ratings the league experienced in 2016, and the Super Bowl’s similarly lackluster…
The mysterious V-Nova codec start up, which came on the scene in early 2015, has acquired one of the other specialists we have been following in compressing video data, Faroudja Enterprises, and in particular its patents. Both have made bold claims about compressing UHD video by 35% to 50% more than a standard HEVC encoder, and because of how they work, they will be “additive” – in other words the outcome should be a stream that is between 25% and 45% of the bandwidth of an HEVC encode. Neither company has explained their respective patents in great detail, why would they, but they have both spoken to Faultline Online Reporter in the past, with V-Nova CEO and Co-Founder, Guido Meardi…
Swiss content security specialist Nagra has announced a major US deal this week with fourth placed broadband provider Altice USA. The deployment will see Nagra’s conditional access technologies rolled out in a new line of 4K and HD set tops, and the Nagra products could be in pole position to replace existing legacy systems from Arris and Cisco. Essentially Altice USA, made up of Cablevision Systems and Suddenlink Communications, looks to have decided that it no longer wanted to upgrade support for two conditional access systems in its cable headend, so instead opted for a single option. This includes Nagra’s MediaLive multiscreen video platform and its converged conditional access and DRM system Nagra Connect, and significantly, it can still house…
Amazon’s Alexa platform was everywhere at CES, despite the voice assistant not having a booth. Showing up in smart home devices, TVs, and even kitchen appliances, Amazon has apparently managed to salvage something from its abortive Fire Phone plans. Now, the auto industry is looking to the platform, as a way to stave off the encroachment from Apple and Google. To date, Volkswagen, BMW, Hyundai, Toyota and Ford have announced integrations between their vehicles and Alexa, and suppliers like Inrix have also announced support – with Inrix adding Alexa to its OpenCar platform, and Automatic being one of the first OBD-II (on-board diagnostics) adapters to announce support. For the auto makers, this is a straightforward way to add a capable voice control platform to their vehicles, allowing…
Orange has announced 5G-oriented initiatives with both Nokia and Ericsson in the past week, unveiling a joint test platform in France with the former, and achieving a 10Gbps data rate in a project with the latter. The French group said it would establish “open innovation platforms” at Nokia’s and its own R&D facilities in France to define and test platforms to support 5G-based services. The focus will be on a whole laundry list of technologies which may be starting in 4G, but are seen as essential components of 5G – namely ultrafast broadband, Cloud-RAN, Massive MIMO, network slicing, new spectrum bands, energy efficiency and IoT applications. The partners said they aim to “drive the definition and development of these new…
The US carriers’ land grab for fiber and fixed wireless assets continues. Verizon has completed its acquisition of fiber provider XO Communications, which also brings it access to high frequency 5G spectrum, while AT&T has made its own acquisition, of FiberTower. Meanwhile Dish, which remains the dark horse in the US wireless and quad play race, has taken control of important fiber and spectrum assets from its sister company EchoStar. And Google is expanding its fixed wireless footprint, courtesy of its WebPass acquisition, as well as conducting tests in high band spectrum. For now at least, this is not about cutting edge 5G use cases. It is a continuation of the old game of getting spectrum on the cheap –…
With ECOMP, AT&T and Amdocs have scored significant points in the race to drive standards telco virtualization. The software – for management and orchestration (MANO) of virtualized networks – has been placed into open source, as promised last year, with Bell Canada and Orange as its other service provider backers. But leadership in the standards for this enormously strategic piece of software – likened by AT&T SVP Chris Rice to the significance of Linux in computer operating systems – will not be won unchallenged. AT&T has played a strong hand by opening up the platform it developed with Amdocs at such an early stage. However, there are two other major open source projects in the MANO field, the OpenStack-based Open-O…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Itron has joined the Wi-SUN Alliance, as a promoter member, aiming to push the 802.15.4g standard in the utility and smart grid ecosystem. American Express has joined the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger blockchain project. Telit has acquired GainSpan, a specialist in low-power WiFi hardware and software. No price was given, but Telit is looking to grow in short-range connectivity offerings. HPE has acquired Niara, planning to integrate Niara’s cybersecurity expertise HPE’s Aruba division, which is expanding to serve IoT devices. Samsung has acquired Perch, a smart home software company that centered on turning old phones into interactive cameras. Forecasts, Reports, and Blue Sky Thinking InterDigital has published a whitepaper, discussing the implications of data exchange on the connected…
Google has announced a release candidate for version 1.0 of its open source machine-learning framework. Called Tensorflow, the deep learning library can be thought of like a programming language, and a new compiler has opened it up to running on mobile devices. IBM has wasted no time in announcing Tensorflow support for its PowerAI compute platform, for servers running its Power chips and Nvidia’s GPUs. Google already internally uses Tensorflow to power many of its applications, such as its searches, Gmail, Photos, Street View, Translate, and speech recognition for Android. While it was initially released under an Apache 2.0 license in 2015, the developmental software library is set for a big step forward with its new features. Tensorflow is a…
Bosch is an industrial monolith, which is on the verge of a huge IoT initiative, as it prepares to launch the Bosch IoT Cloud. Its recently released 2016 results put total sales at $78.54bn, up around 3.5% from 2015’s $75.86bn (up 5.4% once exchange rates are accounted for), employing around 390,000 people globally. As a private company, it doesn’t release the kinds of details you’d expect to see from a public entity, but it lists its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to $4.62bn. Due to its 130-year history, Bosch has been conservative in its strategy. But in 2014, it began overhauling its internal structures to ready itself for the IoT – with a key part of this being the…
Amazon’s Alexa platform was everywhere at CES, despite the voice assistant not having a booth. Showing up in smart home devices, TVs, and even kitchen appliances, Amazon has apparently managed to salvage something from its abortive Fire Phone plans. Now, the auto industry is looking to the platform, as a way to stave off the encroachment from Apple and Google. To date, Volkswagen, BMW, Hyundai, Toyota and Ford have announced integrations between their vehicles and Alexa, and suppliers like Inrix have also announced support – with Inrix adding Alexa to its OpenCar platform, and Automatic being one of the first OBD-II adapters to announce support. For the automakers, this is a straightforward way to add a capable voice-control platform to…
SiriusXM has reported record revenue of $1.3 billion for the fourth quarter, up 9% year-on-year, and $5 billion for the full-year 2016, a growth of 10%. Net income for the year was $746 million, rising 46%. Oculus, the VR firm purchased by Facebook, has been ordered to pay $500 million to games company ZeniMax for breaking an NDA signed in 2012 for the technology used in the Oculus Rift VR headsets. Vodafone Germany is launching a new TV platform this month called GigaTV – integrating linear TV, on-demand content and streaming apps. The 1TB UHD set top costs €14.99 a month, whereas the multiscreen only version is available for a monthly fee of €9.99. It will be available over the…
Nokia revealed this week that it is its Velocix CDN, inherited when it acquired Alcatel, which drives the OTT video traffic for Sky. The system has just been upgraded from simply taking OTT content to the set top – by far the hardest part of the job – to taking on Sky Go and Now TV’s traffic as well. Faultline counts Sky’s OTT service as one of the largest in Europe, up there with Liberty Global’s Horizon Go and associated services such as MyPrime, which our Rethink OTT Intelligence service rate as the two largest paid OTT services in Europe after Netflix. Sky has about 7.5 million regular users of its various OTT services, and increasingly we see almost all…
Dish Network has snatched a set of assets from its set top and satellite services sister company EchoStar, including some which are key for the development of OTT technologies and services. The benefits are clear for both parties – but the deal suggests that Dish is dressing itself up for potential buyers (or mergers), while EchoStar may be able to harness new opportunities which have been limited by its close affiliation with Dish. Dish is taking a group of OTT software and hardware developers from EchoStar Technologies, plus its managed fiber backhaul network, wireless spectrum licenses, its national and regional uplink business, as well as EchoStar’s 10% stake in the Sling TV – meaning Dish now has a 100% holding…