Changes to business digitisation brings
ChinaCache, a Beijing-based provider of Content Delivery Network services, has received an additional $31.5m dollar investment, from Western companies, including Intel Capital, reports the China Daily Newspaper.
They’ll be using part of the investment to further expand their current 50-city strong network to cope with the growing demands for audio and video, with the rest of it to purchase competitors to maintain its market position.
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The number of personal computers in use around the world will exceed one billion by the end of next year and grow to a mighty two billion by the year 2015, according to a report by a leading market research firm.
Forrester Research’s new paper, “Worldwide PC Adoption Forecast, 2007 To 2015,” calculates that the world will be clattering along to the sound of a billion computer keyboards by the end of 2008, hitting two billion in 2015.
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Apple is knee deep in advanced talks with some of Hollywood’s biggest hotshots as it prepares to launch an online film rental service to challenge cable and satellite TV operators head on.
According to a report in the Financial Times, the company is looking to sign up enough studios to provide a mass of in-demand premium film content.
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Ericsson has bought 100% of Drutt, a dominant player in providing Mobile Service Delivery Platform’s (MSDP) that is headquartered in Sweden.
This is another purchase by Ericsson who have set themselves up as a provider of complete solutions for mobile operators and content producers who want to have their content distributed over mobile networks.
Ericsson are building a service they call Ericsson IPX which is an end to end service that lets any content producer sell their material through the system, splitting the revenue.
Speaking to senior people close to the division who have bought Drutt say that parts of the system the Drutt has built will fill in a number of functions that they are missing.
Carphone’s pre-tax profits have crashed ten per cent to £123.1million, with the company’s financial buttocks feeling the lash of their £80.5million free broadband launch.
The launch just wasn’t just painful for Carphone, with punters galore feeling the weals of a truly rubbish service, being forced to wait months on end while the company struggled hopelessly to catch up with demand.
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Online stats firm comScore have been busy with their rulers, clicky counters and tape measures to bring us curious folks ‘the first comprehensive review of European Internet activity.’
Their cool-sounding ‘comScore World Metrix’ study reveals that Europeans *heart* the Internet, with an average of 122 million Europeans aged 15 or older being online during an average day in April 2007, compared to 114 million in the U.S.
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Feeling the squeeze from a rampant smart-phone market and faced with the shadow of the iPhone looming large, Palm has announced that it is selling a quarter of the company as as part of a cunning reorganisation plan.
The 25% share has been bought by Silicon Valley private equity firm Elevation Partners for about $325 million, with the terms of the transaction seeing about $940 million in dividends dished out to Palm shareholders.
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We know Tech is hitting all media businesses, but how are they currently responding?
Howard Scott has already covered North One TV and Sony BMG. Today’s final piece covers Kempster, their work with European football and the conclusion.
Highlighting through italics are ours.
Amy Kemp, Kempster
In 1994 the World Cup Sponsorship was managed using a fax machine. Zoom to the present day and you can see how quickly things are changing (for the better!) Amy sees a big challenge for sponsors in the digital age being how do they carve out a unique position for themselves and their offerings when the playing field is so level?
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UK music service last.fm has been sold to US media giant CBS, whose empire covers TV, radio and Web.
Last.fm is the darling of the ‘new’ Internet kids, as it is based on buzzword-tastic technology. While that’s true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is really rather good, using the listen preferences of everyone else on the service to automatically pick the tracks that probably match the music that you like.
Its major strength is that it throws in tracks that you may well have never found under your own volition – vital in a world where personal playlists can kill variety.
At £140m ($280m) the BBC are calling it the “largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.” Quite how that’s defined is anyone guess, but it is a lot of lolly, so trebles all round.
One of the founders, Martin Stiksel told the BBC that “this move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm,” quite an ambition, but as he added, “with a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach.”
It’s planned that the site and company will continue to operate separately under it’s own branding.
Stiksel also bigged up the UK’s capital city, by saying “being in London has helped us; it’s the best place to do things with music full stop. It’s the place that leads the world.” Hurrah!
(Via)
We know Tech is hitting all media businesses, but how are they currently responding?
Howard Scott covered North One TV yesterday; today it’s Sony BMG; and the final piece tomorrow is Kempster, their work with European football and the conclusion.
Highlighting through italics are ours.
Duncan Bird, VP of Futures, Sony BMG
Duncan Bird is an ex-Leagas bod, just like me – so he’s got to be cool, right?
For Duncan, change in anything is good and is often the best way to learn. For Sony BMG, the music industry is in a state of constant change, and as an example, the Justin Timberlake album (got you copy yet? No? Strange!) sold in 71 different formats. That’s a big change from CD, Tape and Vinyl!
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