Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

It’s all Gone Pete Tong: First Advert on UK 3G Mobiles
UK’s first video mobile network, 3, has announced the first advert to be broadcast over a 3G service.
The 30 second advert promotes a new cinema release and is the result of a video mobile marketing agreement between 3, mobile marketing services provider Flytxt and RedBus Film Distribution.
3’s customers will be able to download a trailer of the new British cult film “It’s all Gone Pete Tong” – a Toronto film festival award-winner – released in UK cinemas on 26 May.
Notably, this is the first time that 3G has been introduced into the traditional marketing blitz of TV, online and print media, and may well prove a precursor to future advertising campaigns.
The clip will be launched in mid-May and made available via ‘Today on 3’, with the first 100,000 customers able to download the clip for nowt.
Viewers will be able to view clips from the “hilarious” comedy, and obtain information about the film, the plot and its stars.
Gareth Jones, COO, 3 energised: “This is a very exciting development; advertisers now have a new and targeted visual medium with which to reach consumers.
As the UK’s largest video mobile operator, we know what our customers enjoy watching over 3G, we also know the profile of our customers, this means that adverts or paid-for content can be tailored and relevant, so the consumer wins too.”
Pamir Gelenbe, co-founder and Director of Corporate Development, Flytxt was equally chuffed: “We’re delighted to be working with 3, the UK’s leading 3G network on such an innovative approach to mobile marketing and advertising. The advantage for brand owners is that mobile marketing combines the wide reach of TV with the precision of DM and the tracking potential of the Internet. ”
“It’s All Gone Pete Tong” examines the life of superstar DJ Frank Wilde and has been praised as ‘Sharp, funny and mind-blowingly good’ by those connoisseurs of taste, The Sun TV Mag.
We’re always up for a bit of free content when we get to choose to download it or not, but the cynics amongst us can’t help suspecting that mobile advertisers might become a little more aggressive in the future, with ‘promotions’ rapidly turning into mobile spam…
3 (UK)
It’s All Gone Pete Tong
19 May, 2005
Yahoo Music Unlimited Launched: Price Shock
Yahoo has slapped a king-sized gauntlet on the floor as it announced plans to roll out an aggressively-priced online music service.
The new service, unsurprisingly dubbed Yahoo Music Unlimited, will give downloaders unlimited access to over a million music tracks for US$6.99 (~£3.70 ~€5.42) a month, or, alternatively, for US$60 (~£31.86 ~€36.58) a year.
The service, which also lets users transfer the songs to compatible portable music players, massively undercuts its rival’s services.
RealNetworks, for example, charge a comparatively hefty US$179 (~£95 ~€139) a year for a near-identical service while Napster charging US$14.95 (~£7.95 ~€11.60) a month for a portable music subscription service and US$9.95 (~£5.25 ~€7.72) a month without the portability option.
“We look at subscriptions as a way to get people to pay as little something for digital music as opposed to ripping their own CDs or stealing music.” Yahoo Music General Manager David Goldberg said.
Yahoo hopes that the low, low, low price is designed to get users hip to the subscription music model, which allows consumers to play downloaded music and “streamed” tracks whenever they want — as long as they keep shelling out for the privilege.
Just like Napster’s similar service – which offers a similarly vast online music library – the second a customer’s cash flow stops, their opulent oasis of a record collection will rapidly turns into a tune-free desert.
Yahoo’s price pruning bonanza looks set to spur further expansion of the online music business, which despite huge growth still only accounts for about 2% or less of total music sales, according to analyst estimates.
Yahoo’s hugely popular Website – visited by 100 million US users every month – should give their music service a big head start, with the company being able to let rip with the kind of massive marketing muscle that few online music rivals can match.
“It’s a hugely aggressive move, a shot in the arm to the subscription notion,” says David Card, an analyst at Jupiter Research, predicting subscription revenue will be larger than downloads within a few years, from roughly equal shares today.
iTunes, the current online music market leader, provides a different service, preferring to charge users on a song or album download basis, with Apple previously being critical of the subscription model.
Some suspect that they may be pressured into adopting a similar offering once Yahoo’s PR machine rolls into action.
Although it’s generally accepted that subscription services are more lucrative than charging per download, some analysts are wondering whether Yahoo will actually be able to make any dosh at the US$60 (~£31 ~€46) annual subscription level.
Yahoo’s David Goldberg has expressed confidence that the service will be profitable, although conceded that the company could eventually raise its fees. He’s been a bit sketchy with the small-print details too, but says Yahoo will pay music labels royalties linked to its revenue and subscriber numbers for the service.
Yahoo’s subscription service will work with selected portable MP3 players that use Microsoft’s digital-music format – there’s currently around compatible 10 devices available, including Dell’s DJ player and Creative Technology’s Zen Micro.
Owners of compatible devices will have to install new software on them to be able to use the service, with newer models offering built-in compatibility.
Apple may be slightly perturbed to learn that the Yahoo’s service will not work with their iPod, despite it being the biggest selling digital music player on the planet and probably elsewhere.
Yahoo’s testosterone-charged move reflects their determination to grab a Brobdingnagian chunk of the online music pie, with the company splashing out US$160 million (~£85m ~€124m) last year to acquire MusicMatch, a company already offering a song/album download deal with a non-portable subscription service.
MusicMatch’s subscription charges have now come down to match the new service with Yahoo expected to merge the two services shortly.
The new service will include free software a la Apple’s iTunes jukebox, with the bonus of letting subscribers rummage around in their friends computers for songs, and then listen to their tracks if the music is part of Yahoo’s catalogue.
To further entice subscribers, Yahoo is looking to incorporate the social aspects of listening to and discovering music through tie-ins with other Yahoo services -like gamers on Yahoo’s site being able to listen to the same music as friends they are playing with.
Yahoo Music users not ‘down’ with this subscription thang will still be able to buy tracks under the traditional download model, with fees of 79 cents (~£0.42 ~€0.62) per song for Music Unlimited subscribers and 99 cents (~£0.53 ~€0.77) for nonsubscribers.
Yahoo
MusicMatch
11 May, 2005
BlackBerry Harvests More Than 3 Million Subscribers
Research In Motion (RIM) have announced that that the BlackBerry wireless communicator now boasts 3 million worldwide subscribers, with one million subscribers added in less than six months.
The rise of RIM users has been astonishing. BlackBerry subscribers reached the one million mark in February 2004 with that figure being doubled in less than ten months as the company reached two million subscribers in November 2004.
“It’s an exciting time as BlackBerry continues to enjoy enormous success and rapid growth around the world,” purred Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO, Research In Motion. “With over 50,000 retail points of presence, accelerated geographic expansion and the anticipated addition of 100 new carriers in 2005, we are scaling our operations for the five million and 10 million subscriber milestones.”
BlackBerry Enterprise Server’s ability to integrate with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise (and other existing enterprise systems) has proved a hit with corporate customers keen to take advantage of push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.
Individuals and smaller businesses have also been attracted to the BlackBerry Internet Service, which allows users to access up to ten corporate and/or personal e-mail accounts (including Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and many popular ISP email accounts) from a single device.
Looking to the future, RIM is teaming up with Microsoft and IBM to extend instant messaging to BlackBerry subscribers through Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Lotus instant messaging.
Pulsating with confidence, the company says it is gearing up to cope first with 5m subscribers and then 10m users, although it failed to give any idea of when they might expect to pass these hefty milestones.
With the NTP lawsuit now resolved, RIM is free to follow its European initiative and license its Blackberry Connect software to US mobile phone vendors, so we can expect to see more third-party phones and handsets connecting to the service.
Recent figures revealed that BlackBerry recorded a 76 percent increase in its total sales in the first quarter of 2005, while its main competitor Palm saw its sales slide by 26 percent.
Research In Motion (RIM)
RIM settles NTP lawsuit for $450m
9 May, 2005
Broadcast Flag Knocked Back By US Court
Today, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) does not have authority to prohibit companies from making computer and video hardware that doesn’t comply with the Broadcast Flag. This was to come into effect on 1 July, this year.
As far back as 2002, representations were made to the FCC by the content industry to restrict the use video content on US Digital TV sets, as the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, as it was named then, crossed the line“.
Despite having had some notice on this, today’s ruling will be a shock for content owners.
We spoke to John Enser, Partner in Media and Communications at Olswang, “It isn’t the first time that the FCC have had one of their decisions overturned. There are usually two type of ruling; a firm no, or a softer ‘you haven’t done it right this time, but there may be ways it can be done.’ This at first glance, this looks like a firm no.”
We equated it to either a door being slammed, or it being politely pushed closed, but left ajar. It appear as if it’s the big slam.
Is this the end of the road for the Broadcast Flag? Probably not thinks John Enser, “They can either appeal, or they could go back to Congress to give them the powers.” We’d imagine it’s probably more likely Congressmen will be getting phone calls today as content owners are fierce lobbyists in Washington. When we put this to Cory Doctorow, European outreach officer of the EFF he felt it was less likely, “The only option open to Hollywood is to find a senator so suicidal that they are prepared to force a law that will break their delegates television sets.”
Ren Bucholz, EFF Policy Co-ordinator, America told us that the EFF were “shocked and delighted” by the ruling. In particularly “by the pro-public interest language used” and “unanimity of all three judges voting the same way.” He went on to wonder what it meant to the future of the FCC, “possibly leading to a trimming of their wings.”
A number of calls to the MPAA were not returned before publication.
As to what will happen to all of the TV and computer equipment that has been manufactured in readiness for 1 July is unclear, as is whether the FCC will be compelled to rebate the manufacturers of the effected equipment.
We’ll leave the closing words to Cory Doctorow, “Now the Broadcast Flag is dead, it is essential that the content industry doesn’t introduce the same restrictions into Europe, via the back door of the DVB specification.”
Court ruling FCC
(photo credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation)
6 May, 2005
Yahoo Video Search Leaves Beta, Adds Content
Yahoo has pulled a fast one on its rivals by unexpectedly taking it’s five month long ‘Beta’ video search service to a full release, and adding some new media partners to provide searchable material.
The service enables Web users to find and view a wide variety of video content including news footage, movie trailers, TV clips and music videos.
The announcement comes just days after Google had proudly paraded new partners for its beta video search service, which lets users search closed captioning content and view still shots of video clips.
Google has also been seeking original material by inviting users to submit their own video to the service.
Finding video content on Yahoo’s new search facility is easy enough: type in the relevant keywords and you’ll be taken to a results page showing thumbnails of the video files. Clicking on the thumbnail takes you to the hosting page with an option to directly view the video.
Sources for Yahoo’s new search feature have been expanded to include CBS News, Reuters, MTV, VH1.com, IFILM.com, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, as well as an assortment of independent producers and content pulled by spidering the Web for video content.
In the interests of research, we rummaged around for naughty porn, but couldn’t find anything too racy – until we spotted the ‘turn safe search off’ option. Clicking on this released a veritable cascade of filth that would send Mary Whitehouse’s graveyard residence spinning in turbo mode.
This latest development adds more fuel to the almighty bun fight currently being battled out between Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves and less well-known names like Blinkx, as companies compete to grab a juicy slice of the lucrative video search advertising business.
These companies clearly understand that in the future of a near infinite number of sources for content, the consumer is going to become very confused and possibly overwhelmed by choice, unless someone, or a service guides then through it. Having identified this, they’re all chasing it.
Yahoo Video Search
5 May, 2005
3 Get Granada’s Celebrity Wrestling TV Footage To Mobiles
UK third-generation mobile phone network 3, have teamed up with TV production and distribution company Granada to bring the popular ITV show, Celebrity Wrestling, to video mobiles for the first time.
(Note to readers unacquainted with this particular TV show: it’s a series of dreadful wrestling matches featuring barrel-scraping Z-List ‘celebrities’ desperately seeking tabloid fame).
The new agreement will give 3 network users access to the show’s ‘highlights’ with the added ‘bonus’ of backstage outtakes.
Gareth Jones, COO of 3 thinks the idea is a whoop-de-do winner: “TV shows like this are ideal for our ‘Today on 3’ service, we’re tapping into programmes that we know our customers really enjoy and we’re providing it to them in bite-size chunks on 3.”
Building up to a crescendo of celebrity-fuelled excitement, Jonesy went on: “Our customers are watching Celebrity Wrestling at home on TV, reading about it in the newspapers and through this new agreement with Granada, they can now watch the highlights on 3.”
Katrina Moran, Granada Interactive lined up for a synergistic snog: “We’re excited to be working with 3 and delighted to see Celebrity Wrestling proving so popular on 3’s video mobile network. We know Celebrity Wrestling fans won’t want to miss any of the action, with 3 they can watch their favourite moments on the move and even get the backstage uncut action too.”
Lord knows who would want to fork out for this dreadful tack, but Granada will be supplying around sixty video clips to 3 customers over the course of the eight week series, with the clips charged at 50p each (or included within add-on packages).
Why anyone would want to fork out to view the cray-zeeee backstage antics of a load of stretching-the-definition-of-the-word ‘celebrities’ on a mobile screen sure beats us, but it provide ample proof of the old adage; ‘where there’s muck, there’s brass’.
Celebrity Wrestling
Granada TV
5 May, 2005
Webroot: Spyware Makes $2bn a Year Claim
Anti-spyware firm Webroot have produced a survey which claims that spyware – invasive programs that generate pop-ups, hijack home pages and redirect searches – generate an estimated US$2bn (~£1.05bn~€1.54bn) in revenue a year.
The report suggests that a huge number of consumer computers are infested by some form of spyware, with their SpyAudit software revealing that 88 per cent of scans found some form of unwanted program (Trojan, system monitor, cookie or adware) on consumer computers.
Based on their scans from the first quarter of 2005, the vast majority of corporate PCs (87 per cent) were also found to have undesirable programs or cookies lurking within.
Excluding cookies, more than 55 per cent of corporate PCs contained unwanted programs, with infested consumer PCs crawling with an average of 7.2 non-cookie infections.
Dastardly system monitor programs (key loggers) were found in seven per cent of consumer and enterprise PCs scanned using Webroot’s software, down from 19 per cent in Q4 2004.
Lallygagging trojan horse programs were found on 19 per cent of consumer PCs and seven per cent of enterprise PCs, a figure unchanged from Q4 2004.
“To combat spyware effectively, the anti-spyware industry must be fully informed about the origins of spyware, its growth path and the impact it has on consumers and businesses,” warned David Moll, CEO at Webroot.
“Our previous Quarterly SpyAudit Reports have provided a numerical analysis of spyware’s growth, but our industry has been lacking a comprehensive resource that fully documents the spyware threat. The State of Spyware Report fills that void and delivers the most in-depth, expansive review and analysis of spyware to date.”
Webroot’s data comes from an analysis of stats from Webroot’s consumer and corporate SpyAudit tools and from online research conducted by Webroot’s automated spyware research system, Phileas.
Although most spyware is associated with flesh-tastic porno sites and deeply dodgy warez sites, Phileas recognised 4,294 sites (with almost 90,000 pages) containing some form of steeenkin’ spyware.
Here’s the science: Webroot reached their figure for the value of the spyware market by multiplying the average number of pieces of adware per machines (4.38, they say) by the number of active users on the net (290m – according to Nielsen Netratings) times the value of each adware installation per year – US$2.25 (~£1.18~€1.73), a figure derived Claria’s filing that it made US$90m (~£47.3m~€69.5m) a year from 40m “users”.
Although these figures seem disturbing, many industry eyebrows have arced skywards at Webroot’s figures, with an article in Techdirt suggesting that the company might be trying to pump up its own value by exaggerating the threat.
The scathing piece points out that Webroot is using a highly controversial method of including “mostly harmless tracking cookies” and lumping them in with spyware to boost the apparent size of the market.
Webroot Justifies Its Own Over-Valued Existence
Webroot
4 May, 2005
Google Video Search Adds 14 US TV Channels
Google continues to sink its teeth into the potentially lucrative TV search business, with the announcement that it has added 14 new channels to its Google Video service.
The search titans are yet to declare the full line-up, but Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Health Channel, and CNN are among the new channels covered by the service.
Google Video archives television content by searching the closed captioning text of TV programs and returning a selection of still frames with matching dialogue excerpts.
Due to unsettled licensing terms, Google cannot provide full transcripts or video clips, although their website teasingly suggests that we “stay tuned” for news.
Although the service is in beta, Google have said that programming will be expanded internationally when work is completed in the U.S. television market.
Development of the TV indexing service is being developed at the same time as Google’s new ‘video blogging’ distribution platform.
This lets video makers upload their videos to Google’s servers and maintain control over distribution rights, ultimately letting users search, preview, purchase and play videos through Google.
Naturally, Google’s arch-nemesis Yahoo is also competing for a slice of the juicy TV and video search pie, offering a similar service that indexes the text surrounding video links, including metadata.
Google Video
3 May, 2005
BT Rich Media And Sportfive To Stream WorldCup Qualifiers
BT Rich Media has cuddled up to Sportfive, a French sports marketing group, and announced a partnership to make 2006 Football World Cup qualifying and friendly games available to fans streamed over broadband on the Internet.
Under the terms of the agreement, Sportfive – owners of the largest portfolio of European qualifying games – will use the BT Rich Media platform for publishing and distributing the video content.
Football bonkers viewers will be able to choose between 250Kbps or 500Kbps quality streams for approximately £7 (~US$13 ~€10), or alternatively download the entire match to keep forever for around £5 (~US$9.50 ~€7). As a long suffering Wales fan, I have to admit that there’s several games which I never wish to see again!
Not every match will be available online though, with only untelevised games being available to stream/download.
The games will be served up on http://www.qualifiers2006.com and promoted to over 10 million users via a range of affiliate sites such as soccernet.com,.teamtalk.com, sportinglife.com and rivals.net .
BT Rich Media will also be using the same technology to stream the forthcoming Scottish BT Cup Final at ScottishRugby.org.
BT Rich Media
Sportfive
28 April, 2005
3G boosts Ericsson’s profits
Ericsson has reported a thumping great rise in quarterly profits, helped by the deployment of 3G networks.
The Swedish telecommunications equipment giant reported better than expected first quarter profits of 6.7 billion kronor (£499 million), compared with 3.7 billion kronor last year.
Ericsson, the world’s largest supplier of mobile phone networks, said that net income for the first quarter increased 73 percent to 4.64 billion kronor (US$661 million) from a year earlier.
Sales were up 12 percent at 31.5 billion kronor, buoyed by the roll out of 3G services in Western Europe and increased demand for WCDMA, a high-speed transmission technology, in Eastern Europe and Turkey.
The company also saw solid demand in emerging markets with a substantial rise in sales expected in China in the second quarter.
These figures fly in the face of predictions from investors and analysts that sales would drop steadily for the big telecoms firms as Chinese manufacturers took over the industry.
Robert Sellar, head of technology on the equities desk of Aberdeen Asset Management, commented that these predictions failed to take into account the amount of spending that these companies’ customers needed to do to improve their existing networks to support 3G and other new technologies.
Ericsson’s orgy of champagne popping was, however, slightly marred by the news of unexpectedly strong reports from arch rivals Nokia and Motorola.
Ericsson
Ericsson First Quarter report
Nokia’s Quarterly Profit Increases By 18 Percent
Motorola Announces Record First-Quarter Sales and Earnings
25 April, 2005