Wednesday, December 7, 2005|
@ Media Week: Disney: More Than 800,000 Downloads Of ABC Shows So Far. : Disney SVP/CFO Tom Staggs told investors and analysts at CSFB that iTunes has sold some 800,000 downloads of ABC's "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives." Speaking with a small group of reporters after the session, Staggs said he thought the $1.99 per episode price would stick-- "right now, it looks like that price is what people are willing to pay" -- although the company could try other approaches with diifferent kinds of content. Staggs also said, when I asked, that the price wasn't dependent on Apple. As for cannibalization, he reiterated that the company wasn't concerned about it when they started the experiment, then noted that they haven't lost audience and, in fact, some ratings have gone up. He also pointed out that the video iPod audience should be larger after the holidays. The deal, he told the audience, is one of the "examples, albeit a small one, of the ways we can reach consumers." [PaidContent.org] 1:58:23 PM  comment
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Cingular Goes High-Speed.
After announcing a few days ago that it plans to compete in the push-to-talk space, today Cingular has also decided to introduce high-speed wireless services in 16 US markets. Obviously part of the big picture that will help the company compete with Verizon Wireless and Sprint, the service should be expanded to most of the top 100 markets by 2006. Laptop customers will see the service first and handsets will be upgraded to high speed next year. T-Mobile—WTF? Wake up!
Cingular Wireless sets high-speed wireless plans [Reuters] 1:54:29 PM comment
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Playboy "Bodcasts" Available.
These Bodcasts will be available through the Playboy website and will feature video of Playmates, the joke of the day, commentary from ole' Hugh, and advice from the gals. The Bodcasts are free as long as you sign up for the Playboy newsletter. Bodcasts. HA! Get it? Oh Hugh, you are SO funny—am I still banned from the mansion? I promise not to hide webcams in the toilet again.
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Playboy is jumping on the podcast bandwagon by offering up their new "Bodcast" daily video podcasts. |
$20 Cellphones in Two Years.
If you're tired of investing in the coolest, most expensive cell phones on the market, the winds of change may be blowing. Looks like chip companies have been banding together to bring us phones as cheap as $20 by 2007. Promising us the quality we're accustomed to, the companies are saying that the key to making lower-priced handsets is building in fewer features, and are now working to do things such as integrate key functions into a single chip for just $5. Not bad. Right now, phone producers use about 150 components to assemble a phone; this would obviously ratchet that down—hopefully to around 50 components. With production prices at that level, the wholesale price of a handset, which includes distribution and other costs, will be at or below $20," said Horst Pratsch, vice president for Entry Platforms at German chip maker Infineon. "Most consumers get their phones directly from their wireless operator, and the retail price is based on the wholesale cost to mobile carriers."Won't it be nice when the wireless operators don't have us all by the balls?
Chip makers drive race to $20 cellphones by 2007 [Gizmodo]1:47:56 PM comment
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E-Paper Display In Tokyo Station.
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Linux Phone.
Impress 1:31:06 PM comment
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Europeans Get HBO on Their Cellphones, We Get Snake II. What Gives?.
Ok, I've dealt with Europe and Asia getting the cool phones first. But come on: They get HBO on demand from 3G too? That's OUR channel! Looks like Vodaphone is announcing a global Mobile TV service, which will offer series like Sex and the City, Six Feet Under or Curb Your Enthusiasm on its Vodafone Live! service. Bastards. And to rub it in, they'll also get Eurosport, Twentieth Century Fox Television, The UEFA Champions League, Discovery, MTV, Chilli TV and Fashion TV in countries like New Zealand or UK. All this will work on any 3G-enabled phone in eight of Vodafone's operating countries: Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and the UK; three associate networks—Belgium, France and Switzerland; and one partner network, Austria. All we get are crappy ringtone downloads—MIDI Gold Digger!—and a kick in the ass.
Watch HBO in Europe on Vodafone global Mobile TV [i4u] [Gizmodo]1:29:59 PM comment
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Brits Get Satellite on their PCs.
The Brits seem to be ahead of their time, now allowing BskyB digital satellite customers to download hundreds of films as well as highlights from major sporting events onto their PCs—all for no extra cost. Stunning, really. Called skybybroadband, the service promises a good mix of films, including Hollywood blockbusters and classic movie titles, as long as they're available on its Sky Movies channels. All you need is a PC running Windows XP and a broadband connection. And all this is being done through third-party software by Kontiki, so it looks like you won't be able to then download any of the content to any other PMPs you may have handy. Soooooorrrrrrrrrry. But come on! Video on demand? WTF!
BSkyB Launches Free Movie Download Service [Bios Magazine] [Gizmodo]1:23:21 PM comment
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NBC to Sell TV Shows for Viewing on Apple Software. NBC Universal said Tuesday that it would start to sell downloadable versions of 11 of its television shows through Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store. By SAUL HANSELL. [NYT > Technology] 1:20:13 PM comment
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UK: 3G success to help handset growth - report. 
Research and Markets has announced the addition of Mobile Handset Market - Outlook - 2005 - 2012, United Kingdom to their offering. The mobile communications market is expanding substantially. As was the case in past the growth in this segment depends heavily on new innovations in technology and continuous evolution of business models. This segment, once again is gearing up for unprecedented growth due to advancement in mobile data technology, falling price points and the success of the initial 3G roll out. |
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As It Happened - i-mode history - management didn't see the vision. Nobuharu Ono, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo USA, recounted some of the growing pains that DoCoMo went through as it developed the i-mode platform. "Management didn't see the vision at first," he said. "They thought cell phones were just for business. They didn't think people would download ring-tones or cartoon character screen savers." [i-mode Business Strategy] 1:18:26 PM comment
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How I learnt to love playlists. I hadn't realised how compulsive building playlists was until I heard the announcement that we were about to touch down in HK, after more than 8 and a half hours flying from Melbourne, and I hadn't watched the 2 movies that I had noted to view!! How would a mobile version work? [i-mode Business Strategy] 1:16:51 PM comment
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Mobile WiMAX Standard Approved. BREAKING: IEEE standards body has approved the 802.16e standard and with that, what is commonly known as Wireless MAN or WiMAX has gone mobile. (More information here.) Obviously, I need to spend sometime reading the final draft, and get my head wrapped around this complex issue.
Initial thoughts: With that, the easy part is done, and now companies have to get onboard with the concept, start developing silicon and equipment. But more than that, money has to be found, to essentially (and eventually) replicate the cellular mobile infrastructure. It is going to be a very costly and long drawn out process. It might be easy to get caught in the euphoria surrounding the news, but we all need to take a deep breath and get prepared for a long haul. More on this later…
Motorola and Navini Networks are being supremely aggressive about the mobile WiMAX and are betting big on the technology. 802.16e doesn’t seem to be compatible with 802.16d, there are some chip vendors like PicoChip, who are working on addressing the issue. “There are growing concerns if service providers need to immediately roll out a fixed 802.16d network or wait for the fixed/portable 802.16e standard,” says Luke Thomas, Senior Research Analyst at Frost and Sullivan. Many beleive that in the near term, fixed wireless/WiMAX (802.16d) will be used for back-hauling to WiFi hot-spots.
(Hat Tip, Micky!) By nobody@example.com (Om Malik). [Om Malik on Broadband]1:16:09 PM comment
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Hinduja's In2cable Offers Broadband Connection At Rs 450 ($10) A Year. Indiantelevision.com: Broadband rates are coming down. In2cable India Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hinduja TMT, has slashed cable internet rates to as low as Rs 200 ($4.5) a quarter or Rs 450 annually ($10). But the download limit is 250 MB. The speed has been increased to 256 kbps. Earlier, In2cable was charging Rs 250 per month for a download limit of 200 MB on a speed of 128 kbps. "We want to tap entry level users through this scheme. We are offering transparent a pay-per-use system," says In2cable (India) general manager, sales and marketing, Anil Srivastava.In2cable has also introduced an entirely new scheme for its LAN (local area network) services which are branded as In2net. For these residential users, In2cable has priced 256 kbps services at Rs 800 per month. Subscribers will, however, have a 200 MB download limit per day. If they cross this limit, the number of days will be reduced according to the usage consumed. "This is a totally new scheme we have introduced. It will stop subscribers from abusing bandwidth," says Srivastava. [ContentSutra] 12:52:17 PM comment
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Bill Gates Meets Anil Ambani Of Reliance Infocomm; Among Issues Discussed Is IPTV. Televisionpoint.com: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who is on a four day visit to India, has met Reliance Infocomm chairman Anil Ambani to discuss various areas of cooperation. One of the issues discussed was a deal between the two on IPTV (Internet protocol television). "I had a chance to meet Anil Ambani today. We will now help them in rolling out broadband services... He has a strategy in place and we will play a key role in helping them," Gates said after the meeting, PTI says. "We are putting renewed energy into the (IPTV) tie-up," Gates said. Reliance Infocommm had signed an agreement with Microsoft in October 2003 for rolling out IPTV in India.Reliance Infocomm and Microsoft will develop IPTV technology that will offer vast features on a TV via terrestrial network. [ContentSutra] 12:44:52 PM comment
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Indian Internet Subscriber Base To Cross 38.5 Million This Year: IAMAI. Exchange4Media.com: There are several estimates on India's net subcriber base. A couple of months ago when I asked internet companies like Yahoo! India and Rediff, they said the base cannot be more than 25 million. Anyway, it's a moving/dynamic number, and this is the latest on the subject. According to a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the Internet user base in the country grew by 54 per cent to reach 38.5 million users in 2005 from just 25 million in the previous year. E-commerce, too, has registered an impressive growth. Currently, the total e-commerce market in India is estimated at Rs 1,180 crore (2005-06), which is estimated to grow to Rs 2,300 crore by 2006-07, an over 100 per cent increase.
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Reliance Info bets on localized content. Reliance Infocomm sees a lot of growth in providing local content and support. The company is working at trying to provide multi lingual support to address localization. It currently provides support in four Indian languages and plans to further increase this number. Reliance Info also has a regional focus of providing local language content. It currently provides content in eight Indian languages on mobiles and plans to increase this number to 11 in the next six months. The company has a team of 25 people who reformat the content, which is generated from different sources to provide it on the phone. Krishna Durbha, Head of Applications Solutions and Content group at Reliance Info:
According to ShareKhan, VAS contributes 6.8% of an operator’s revenue. Source: CIOL [Mobile Pundit]12:40:21 PM comment
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Finmin proposes base 3G entry fee. The finance ministry has proposed a compromise formula for putting a value to the scarce 3G spectrum. It has recommended that operators should be charged a base entry fee to begin with and subsequently a revenue share for the use of 3G spectrum. The ministry, in its proposal, says the entry fee should not be so high that competition is throttled and the price of services becomes high. The fee should not also be so low that non-serious players accumulate the frequency. TRAI had suggested there should be no entry fee for providing 3G services while Ratan Tata had offered to pay a one-time entry fee of Rs 1,500 crore because it was a scarce resource. Mr Tata reasoned that spectrum is a scarce national resource and if it is given free of cost to operators, it would not be used efficiently and some operators could also engage in its hoarding. But Sunil Mittal opposed it saying that it would increase price of services. He said that the country was short of high quality infrastructure. Any fee by the government would discourage infrastructure buildout. From Rs 1,500 crore, one can build 5,000 base stations and cover 3,000 small towns and villages. [Mobile Pundit]12:38:51 PM comment
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Rebranding Reliance Infocomm. Business Standard reports that Reliance Infocomm’s branding push is to position itself as a contemporary brand that has the ability to connect with the mass. It is today perceived as a value-for-money brand.
The company will unveil its new brand identity shortly with a multi-media campaign. While the media duties will be handled by Mudra's media arm, Optimum Media Solutions, Reliance Infocomm is still in the process of finalising the creative agencies. The agencies that are currently handling the Reliance Infocomm account are Satchi & Satchi and Ambience. The company will restructure its marketing team by having a central marketing team in Mumbai and several circuit marketing teams in regions. Related: The 501 Image [Mobile Pundit]11:32:57 AM comment
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Last update: 1/12/06; 10:50:20 AM .
