Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

UK PS3 Sales Down 82% In Second Week
The news for Sony and their PlayStation 3 just keeps getting worse.
Early pre-UK-release signs weren’t promising, nor were they looking any better when the UK PS3 was selling for £100 under their release price, a couple of days beforehand.
On the positive side, Sony did claim to sell 165,000 consoles in the UK in the first week – making it the UK’s fastest selling home console to date.
Now the official Chart Track figures, that follow sales in the UK are reporting to gamesindustry.biz that sales of the PS3 in the UK have dropped by 82% during its second week of release.
Software sales are also suffering with “sales of the top two PlayStation 3 titles, Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm, had dropped by over 60 per cent.”
It’s not looking much better for the PS3 in Japan, where Bloomberg is claiming that Sony has sold 812,000 PS3s since November 11, against a mighty 1.95 million Wii consoles by Nintendo.
5 April, 2007
Pace Celebrate 25 Years In Business
Our favourite UK Set Top Box manufacturer is celebrating their 25th birthday this year.
25 years! Staggering how old the industry is now isn’t it?
Waaaaaay back in 1982 they started off selling modems and software. Their first product was a PSTN modem called the Nightingale and we can even remember Pace modems from back when 1200/75 baud modems appeared as an exotic advance from the 300 baud ones that were the standard.
For all of you young ones who weren’t around in those days, that’s 1.2/0.075 Kbps vs 0.3 Kbps. Scarily slow.
Following their modem and software successes, Pace launched their first satellite set-top box (SR640) in 1987 and like all design, it was a product of its time, with a fab HiTech feel about it.
From there, Pace really haven’t looked back. They’ve consistently carried out pioneering development, building up a large selection of industry firsts, including the first digital satellite receiver in the UK, the first PVR (personal video recorder) in Europe, the first low-cost digital terrestrial adapter (thereby creating the freeview market in the UK) and, more recently, the very first H.264 DVB-S2 high definition set-top box in the world.
Their latest and greatest product is a HD DVR, the HR20, which records using MPEG-4.
If you, like us, dear tech trivia fan don’t know the history behind the name of Pace, you’ll be excited to hear that the name Pace came from an innovative shipping company in Australia called the Pacific Australia Container Express.
The Next 25 years
Looking forward to the next 25 years, Neil Gaydon, CEO, give his views of where Pace will be innovating, “Soon we will see multiroom and home networking solutions coming through, that will allow you to watch anything you want from any screen in the house, including mobile TV. When you add the fact you will import your photos and internet entertainment to any screen, your music to any room in the home along with wireless technologies emerging, so removing the need for wires, we are at the early stages of a new TV revolution.”
Best of luck to Pace in the coming years, may they continue their success.
Pace Jubilee
4 April, 2007
Google Moves Into The TV Ad Business
With Internet advertising now thoroughly pwned by Google, the company is now looking to break into TV advertising.
The company is set to unveil deals today with satellite TV service EchoStar Communications and Astound Cable in the US to broker commercials in a similar way to how it offers online advertising.
Advertisers will be able to upload adverts to the company’s website and plug in to an automated system to select channel, time and geographical preferences.
Just like the current AdWords system, an auction then determines whether the ads get placed and for what price.
Keval Desai, product management director for Google TV ads, described the new TV scheme as being, “very similar to what we are doing on the Web. TV is becoming like the Web.”
During the television pilot, Google will serve commercials to EchoStar’s Dish Network satellite channels, a US service which enjoys around 13.1 million subscribers. The adverts won’t look any different to regular ones, carrying no Google branding and appearing in the usual time slots.
Google say that advances in set-top-box technologies have made it possible for them to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed and whether folks watched it through to the end.
“Advertisers can use this data to understand the effectiveness of their TV ad campaigns and use this information to provide more relevant ads to viewers,” the company added.
Source
3 April, 2007
Apple And Record Companies Charged In EU iTunes Row
The European Commission has dished out formal charges to Apple and ‘unnamed major record companies’, accusing them of restricting music sales in Europe.
The EU alleges that agreements between Apple and the record companies are guilty of breaking European Union rules that prohibit restrictive business practices. It’s far from the first time that the EU and other Northern European Countries has got wound up about Apple and iTunes.
“Consumers can only buy music from the iTunes online stores in their country of residence and are therefore restricted in their choice of where to buy music, and consequently what music is available and at what price,” said Jonathan Todd, European Commission spokesman.
“The statement of objections alleges that distribution agreements between Apple and major record companies contain territorial sales restrictions,” he added.
Promptly shifting the blame on to the record companies, Apple insisted that they’d tried to operate a single pan-European iTunes store accessible to peeps from any member state but were foiled by music labels and publishers imposing legal limits on the download rights.
The Commission first got involved back in 2005 after the UK consumer group Which? pointed out that iTunes purchasers in France and Germany were paying far less than us poor chumps in the UK (67 pence against 79 pence).
Apple and the record companies now have two months to defend themselves in writing or take part in an oral hearing which usually happens around a month after a written reply has been received.
This latest development is unrelated to yesterday’s deal between Apple and EMI.
Source
3 April, 2007
Beatles Songs For iTunes?
After years of throwing squadrons of lawyers at each other, the big Apples – Apple Inc and Apple Corps – kissed and made up a few months ago and now it looks like they can’t stop the love.
Yesterday, record company giants EMI Group PLC announced that it planned to unveil “an exciting new digital offering” with Steve Jobs and the gang at Apple, leading pundits to conclude that The Beatles’ music catalogue is finally about to be made available through Apple’s iTunes online music store.
Spinning the expectation-o-meter right up to eleven, EMI revealed that their chief executive, Eric Nicoli, and Apple head honcho Jobs will be holding a news conference today, which will be supplemented by a “special live performance.”
The Beatles have famously refused to sign up to iTunes and other online music services for years, and many expect the download charts to be instantly filled up with the Fab Four’s songs as soon as their catalogue becomes available.
Of course, the fact that the story broke on April Fool’s Day has led some to think it might be a bit of a jolly wind-up wheeze, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the scheduled 1pm conference happens or not.
Mind you, if it is an April Fool’s it’s a pretty crummy one compared to Google’s TiSP Toilet wireless network one.
2 April, 2007
.xxx Porn Domain Defeated By ICANN
After a long time, the organisation behind the domain names on the Internet has voted against .xxx.
The idea behind the .xxx p0rn domain extension (or Top Level Domain TLD, in domain -ese) has been floating around for a very long time.
Back in March 2004 ICM Registry, based in Florida, put a formal application in for .xxx, in response to ICANN’s request for proposals for new TLDs.
Over the time since then, there’s been many back and forths between ICM and ICANN to try and reach a settlement.
There’s been signs of encouragement from ICANN when it has gone to votes twice back in 2005.
Today the ICANN meeting in Lisbon has voted against .xxx. The reasons they list are
- ICM’s Application and the Revised Agreement fail to meet, among other things, the Sponsored Community criteria of the RFP specification.
- Based on the the extensive public comment and from the GAC’s communiqués that this agreement raises public policy issues.
- Approval of the ICM Application and Revised Agreement is not appropriate as they do not resolve the issues raised in the GAC Communiqués, and ICM’s response does not address the GAC’s concern for offensive content, and similarly avoids the GAC’s concern for the protection of vulnerable members of the community. The Board does not believe these public policy concerns can be credibly resolved with the mechanisms proposed by the applicant.
- The ICM Application raises significant law enforcement compliance issues because of countries’ varying laws relating to content and practices that define the nature of the application, therefore obligating ICANN to acquire a responsibility related to content and conduct.
- The Board agrees with the reference in the GAC communiqué from Lisbon, that under the Revised Agreement, there are credible scenarios that lead to circumstances in which ICANN would be forced to assume an ongoing management and oversight role regarding Internet content, which is inconsistent with its technical mandate.
Reading their application back in March 2004, there’s chance for a bit of a laugh.
The proposed .xxx string is clearly appropriate for the sponsored community as other strings were deemed too Anglo-Saxon and had the potential to lead to confusion (see above).
“too Anglo-Saxon” – brilliant.
Many people feel the .xxx TLD to be a good idea, the theory being that if all porn is pushed on to it, children and those not interesting in seeing p0rn won’t just stumble across it by accident. Given the sheer amount of p0rn on the Internet, that’s not a bad idea, but thinking that p0rnographers will adhere to any rules is wishful thinking.
Frankly if ICANN’s thinking is that by not allowing .xxx they think people won’t think there’s p0rn on the Internet, they’re living in a different world.
Rejection of Proposed sTLD Agreement with .XXX
Public comments on .xxx
30 March, 2007
LG-Google Handsets Coming From Deal
LG have signed a deal with Google to put some of their mobile services pre-loaded onto its handsets.
LG have committed to release at least ten new mobile phone and will jointly market them as LG-Google handsets.
The apps covered by the deal are Google Maps – which lets people view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions, Gmail – the Java-driven, mobile focused version of their email service and Blogger Mobile – which, err … lets you blog while on the move, using images taken from the mobile phone.
Mr. Paul Bae, Vice President of the Product Planning Team at LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company really wants us all to know that “LG’s mobile devices, combined with Google, will provide consumers with easy access to their favourite Internet services even without a PC and make it easy for them to stay connected while in motion.” Wooo!
As we know LG don’t just do mobile phones, but a whole panoply of electronic bits, with a major focus on the home, so it’s interesting to hear from LG that they’ll be extending their relationship with Google to “develop digitalized home in the future.”
The financial terms of the deal were not revealed, indeed it’s unclear if LG will be sharing the income Google will derive from its advertising.
LG are being a little tarty about this. It’s not too long ago (end of 2006) that they signed a deal with Yahoo to pre-load Yahoo! services, including Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo Messenger on many of its mobile phones. Clearly that wasn’t an exclusive deal and it will have covered different handsets we imagine.
28 March, 2007
Novell Linux Mocks “I’m a Mac” TV Adverts
Novell have done a great collection of spoof ads of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” series, you know, the ones that had a UK launch in January this year.
While playing to the same music and video style, it mocks the self congratulatory styles and adds a third character … Linux. Rather than the obvious blokes, it uses a woman to represent Linux.

(more…)
26 March, 2007
Cisco Buy WebEx For $3.2Bn
Networking powerhouse Cisco is to buy the Web conference company WebEx for $3.2Bn.
WebEx is listed on the NASDAQ (WEBX) and is reported to be the leader in its field. They offer a ton of different products, all based around sharing information between a number of remote parties, with the majority of them featuring shared video.
Cisco is actively spreading the number of products and business areas that it covers – they have to really as companies like China-based Huawei move on to Cisco’s previously-core network businesses.
Scientific Atlanta, the maker of TV Set Top Boxes, was a previous purchase. In November 2005, Cisco slapped down twice as much cash for that one – $9.6Bn.
Strangely enough bringing WebEx into the Cisco fold is at the opposite end of the content creation spectrum.
As Charles Giancarlo, Chief Development Officer at Cisco, concisely put it, “As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently.”
WebEx is currently focused on business applications, but it’s highly likely that nearly everyone will be carrying out video conferences in the future as travel becomes more expensive and general restrictions come into effect.
Read Charlie Giancarlo blog piece about the deal
16 March, 2007
Nearly Half Of All UK TVs Digital-ised: Ofcom
The number of UK TVs connected to digital devices – ones that can receive digital TV signals – has increased to 48.5% reports Ofcom.
The quarterly report snappily titled, Communications Market: Digital Television Progress Report, covering the fourth quarter of 2006 (October-December), shows the figures are up from 39% in the same period the previous year, and also from 44.7% in the Q3 2006.
The run up to Xmas is traditionally a time where many more new TVs are bought, in a desperate attempt to increase the ‘enjoyment’ of Xmas by numbing their brains watching ‘entertainment’ on TV. It appears no different this year as a further one million UK homes acquired digital televisions for the first time.
Previously, Ofcom used to highlight the number of UK households that were digital-TV-enabled, which has now reached 77.2%. This figure received a fair degree of criticism as, although it sounded impressive, didn’t give a true reflection of what the impact of switching off analogue would be for UK TV watchers.
There’s been an interesting announcement in the US, where the American households will be offered up to two $40 vouchers to switch to digital TV. The UK government has actively discouraged thinking like this in the UK.
As ever, there’s a huge pile of numbers that will be poured over by those in the industry who get quite excited about this type of thing. We’re normally in this category, but for some reason were not too excited about this quarter.
Communications Market: Digital Television
Progress Report, Q4 2006
14 March, 2007