Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

Is 3G Content Delivering? – Pt 2
Unlike the creative whirlwind that accompanied the dot.com explosion, innovation seems to be a lot slower in the 3G content market.
Limited by strict marketing and corporate product strategies, 3G owners haven’t exactly had a lot to shout about when it comes to mobile content.
Although watching tiny video clips of goalmouth action has a certain appeal (particularly when it’s Cardiff City doing the scoring), all of the networks seem to be offering much the same collection of services.
Predictably, there’s already been many lucrative tie-ins with popular TV shows.
Fans of the teen soap Hollyoaks were offered daily MMS picture slide exclusive stories and Celebrity Big Brother fans could download “behind the scenes” shots, updates and summaries of the show.
ITN news got in on the act too, supplementing their mobile news updates with “today in history” style clips trawled from their vast video archives.
Perhaps Vodaphone’s 60-second “mobisodes”, based on the hugely successful ’24’ series was one of the more successful TV offerings on 3G, with scenes written and shot exclusively for 3G.
All twenty-four instalments of ’24: Conspiracy’ ran for sixty seconds with a cliff-hanger ending leading directly into the next instalment, thus keeping consumer’s fingers hovering over the ‘download video’ key.
“Joel Surnow, Bob Cochran, Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland and their entire creative team have built ’24’ into one of the world’s leading television brands. It’s incumbent upon us at the studio to continually develop new initiatives to service, enhance and extend that brand,” commented Twentieth Century Fox Television President Gary Newman.
“The ’24’ mobile series and the licensing and marketing partnership with world wireless leader Vodafone are truly unprecedented in our business, as they capitalize on the absolute latest in technological innovation and represent a whole new way to reach our fans and promote the original television series.”
So far, almost all the 3G content has been linked to a TV show or brand and mobile consumers seem to value the exclusivity of such content.
While this kind of cross-platform repurposing of content appeals to opportunistic TV stations looking for additional revenues, for the mobile platform to flourish as a medium in its own right, it needs content that exists in its own right.
We’ll take a look at what kind of ideas are bubbling up in part 3.
Hollyoaks Interactive
Fox 24
11 March, 2005
Ikivo, Adobe In Mobile Content Deal
AB (formerly ZOOMON), has announced Ikivo Animator for Windows, a Mobile SVG software application for producing high-quality SVG Tiny animations.
Designed to work with the industry-standard Adobe Creative Suite, Ikivo Animator offers tools to let designers and developers rapidly design, animate, test, and deploy rich Mobile SVG content to mass-market devices.
“Adobe Creative Suite has revolutionized print and Web workflows and is now poised to have a similar impact in mobile content authoring,” said John Brennan, senior vice president of business development at Adobe.
“Designers have previously been hampered by the lack of visual design tools for authoring mobile SVG content. Working with Adobe, Ikivo is introducing an effective mobile content creation workflow based on Ikivo Animator and Adobe Creative Suite, enabling designers and developers to create extraordinary content for mobile distribution.”
Ikivo is hoping that their software will soon become an integral tool in a mobile designer’s armoury and we’ll all soon be grooving to Ikivo-created cray-zeee animations on our handsets.
SVG content created in Illustrator CS can be imported into Ikivo Animator where a set of tools will allow designers to move, scale, rotate, and change their attributes over time; embed interactivity; and output the finished animation in SVG Tiny.
In-between cappuccinos, designers can use the preview tools in Ikivo Animator to see how their work will look on different targeted mobile devices.
Designers can then incorporate their animated SVG Tiny graphics into XHTML pages or MMS presentations using GoLive CS.
This new workflow enables designers and developers to prepare animated SVG Tiny graphics, such as comics, infotainment, location-based services, maps, financial services, and – more than likely – really irritating cartoons for distribution to mobile consumers.
Ikivo CEO Stefan Elmstedt comments “Ikivo solutions are being used by major phone manufacturers, such as Siemens, Sony Ericsson, and network operators throughout the world. Now we are extending that value by partnering with Adobe to provide strategic mobile solutions.
The combination of Adobe’s design and publishing power and Ikivo’s unique Mobile SVG software applications create a fantastic push for overall support of Mobile SVG within the emerging market for 2D based mobile graphics.”
Ikivo Animator for Windows is available immediately with Ikivo Animator scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2005.
Ikivo
Adobe Creative Suite
SVG (w3.org)
11 March, 2005
‘Podvertising’ Supports Virgin Radio Daily Podcast
Virgin Radio is making highlights of its breakfast show available for digital audio players like the iPod, in what it claims is a first for “podcasting”.
The station began making its Pete and Geoff show available to download today, saying it is the first UK station to podcast a daily show.
Podcasting allows audio programmes to be downloaded and later replayed on a computer or popular digital audio players such as iPods, Creative Zens or Walkmans.
The BBC has already been experimenting with the new audio distribution model, introducing weekly podcasts of Five Live’s weekly sports quiz Fighting Talk after a successful trial using Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ series on Radio 4, downloaded by more than 70,000 users.
Listeners can sign up to the service on Virgin’s Website, with a link encouraging users to download the free iPodder desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Once subscribed to the service, listeners will get the latest show highlights every time they synchronise their MP3 player with their computer.
The Virgin podcast sidesteps the still-unresolved copyright issues of distributing music via podcasting by simply editing it all out – Virgin will serve up a half-hour edit of its four-hour breakfast show with all the music, news, weather, traffic and travel cut out.
Interestingly, the UK government Central Office of Information and online travel company Expedia are sponsoring the service via what Virgin cringingly describes as “podvertising”.
Virgin Radio sales director Lee Roberts said: “Radio stations have to adapt to the changing market and new platforms in order to create new revenue channels. We’re proud to be the first with podvertising.”
The Virgin sponsorship deal ensures that their podcasts will be relatively ad-free, although some advertisers may be reluctant to invest too heavily in a format where the ‘fast forward’ key only an iPod twitch away.
Pod casting has already taken off in the United States but has been slow to find an audience in Europe.
Although the format is already creating a few podcasting stars, it has to be said that most of the thousands of personal radio broadcasts currently available to download are home-made, rough-edged, and, frankly, pretty crap.
With increasing sales of MP3 players sales, there’s every possibility that Virgin’s commercial initiative may help push the format into the mainstream.
Virgin Radio Podcasts
Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star (Wired)
iPodder
10 March, 2005
Apple Shares Fall As Sony And Napster Bite
Apple Computer shares dropped Tuesday as Sony relaunched its famous Walkman line amongst concerns that increased competition from Napster might impact its dominance of online music and portable players.
The soaraway success of the iPod music player has transformed Apple’s balance sheet and its stock price, with the company shining as one of the best performers in the Nasdaq technology index over the past year.
But some industry pundits are predicting that Apple is being damaged by serious competition from a new generation of smaller, sleeker and cheaper MP3 players from the likes of Sony, Rio and Creative and a host of online music services led by Napster.
Shares of Apple have dropped 8.5 percent since the announcement of the stock split on 11 February, and have fallen some 6 percent this week alone.
“Competition concerns are certainly going to influence how this stock trades,” said Warren West, principal at Philadelphia-based GreenTree Brokerage Services, which executes trades for institutional investors such as asset managers and hedge funds. “Investors in general have enjoyed the stock moves, there’s a lot of money that has been made, and people are going to start taking profits _ especially after the split.”
Over the last twelve months, Apple’s share price has gone from US$23 (€17/£12) to an all-time high of US$81.99 (€61/£42) just before the split was announced.
Investors must now decide if the company’s share price can maintain its strength in the face of a market getting becoming increasingly crowded with rival products.
Sony are aggressively targeting the iPod with their Walkman line of digital music players, hoping to woo customers with lightweight and compact flash memory players instead of bulkier, hard drive-based units.
In fact, many of the new iPod alternatives aren’t trying to compete with Apple’s player at the high end but are focussing on consumers who are choosing between cheaper, lower-storage-capacity flash-media players and pricier, entry-level hard-drive players that hold more than 1,000 songs.
The Sony flash-media players will be knocked out for as low as US$130 (€97/£68) – not as cheap as the new iPod Shuffle, but considered to be better value because of a longer battery life and more features.
“Flash is going to be here for a while, because it’s more affordable,” Kelly Davis, product manager for Sony Electronics, says. “People are trying to get more capacity for their dollar.
The new Sony players are expected to give the company the No. 2 position in the portable music player market by next year.
Apple’s iTunes service is also coming under attack, with rival Napster recently boosting its sales outlook with growing demand for its new “Napster To Go” subscription service, expected to generate US$15 million for its fiscal fourth quarter.
Apple is also experiencing competition from music services offered by rivals such as Microsoft Corp., Real Networks, and Yahoo.
The company still remains in good shape though, with Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicting continuing good sales for the iPod line.
“Our checks have left us more confident that demand for Apple’s key products most notably iMac, Powerbook, Mac mini and various versions of the iPod continue to be ahead of expectations,” Munster told clients in a research report. “We anticipate that strong demand across various segments of the company will allow Apple to exceed Wall Street estimates for overall revenue and earnings.”
Munster expects the company to report earnings of US$1.04 (€0.77 /£0.53) per share on revenue of US$12.81 billion in 2005, up from previous expectations of a 98% share profit on sales of US$12.25 billion.
Piper Jaffray told clients it expects Apple to sell 3.8 million iPods during the second quarter, including 1 million iPod shuffle models, followed by 4.6 million iPods during the third quarter, with the Shuffle model accounting for 1.8 million of the sales.
Apple Shares Fall on Sony, Napster Fears (PA)
Sony MP3 players
Apple iPod
9 March, 2005
CeBIT Exhibition: Anticipation And Our Coverage
The world’s leading technology tradeshow, CeBIT, starts this Thursday in Hannover, north Germany with pundits expecting the show to reflect the recent stellar growth in the $2 trillion technology industry.
After three slow years, net exhibition space is up from last year at over 316,000 square meters and the organisers are expecting the number of visitors to exceed 510,000 people.
Naturally, Digital-Lifestyles will be there on the ground too, so watch for updates from the show as they happen.
Signs for the industry have been good over the last year with mobile phone unit sales up 30 percent last year and computer shipments rising 15 percent, spurred on by customer-wooing new features such as wireless Internet access, built-in radios and high-quality digital cameras and price cuts.
CeBIT is one of the largest electronics exhibitions in the world – so big, it’s close to frightening. As a guide, there are 6,117 companies from 72 countries taking part this year.
Within the 27 hanger-sized halls, visitors can expect to find a veritable Aladdin’s cave of the latest technologies and services that may well become standard features in a few years time.
Amongst all the technological marvels on display will be Samsung’s humongous 102-inch plasma display panel TV – the world’s largest – LG Electronics’ world’s first 55-inch LCD television, and a 3D monitor display from the German Fraunhofer Institute that allows objects to be manipulated by gestures recognised by bio-sensors.
Naturally, the telecom industry will be out in force, showcasing DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) phones, 3rd generation camera phones, 3D game phones and a clutch of mega-pixel camera phone.
As VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) continues to gain in popularity, there’ll be dozens of companies showcasing devices to make free calls as well as displays of corded and cordless Skype phones by Siemens, Motorola, Good Way Technologies and Greatwall Infotech.
Sony Ericsson will unveil its first phone with a built-in Walkman while Nokia, Samsung and Motorola will be showing off their latest designs.
Naturally, the place will be awash with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices so, in theory, we’ve no excuse for not getting our reports out to you on time!
CeBIT
8 March, 2005
Howard Stringer: Sony Appoints British Chairman
In an extraordinary move, Sony has named the Welsh-born head of its US operations, Sir Howard Stringer, as chairman and chief executive – a rare move for a major Japanese company to give its top post to a foreigner.
Sony’s board are set to agree to appoint the 63-year-old Stringer at an extraordinary meeting in Tokyo today, according to a company source.
Current CEO Nobuyuki Idei, 67, will step down to take responsibility for slumping earnings after what’s been described as ‘five rocky years’ at the helm.
(We think Sony is in a pretty strong position to rule in the time of Digital Lifestyles. They’ve got the content, they got tech and they’re got the cool. They just need to have a stong grip of how media has been changing, and what they can do to take best advantage of it. – Ed)
President Kunitake Ando is also rumoured to be up for the boot, to be replaced by Ryoji Chubachi, an executive deputy president currently in charge of electronics parts and production operations.
Tasked with boosting profitability at Sony, there’s a tough job ahead for Stringer and Chubachi, who are both mindful that their core electronics division has been wobbling in and out of the red amid tough price competition and a lack of big-hitting products.
In recent years Sony has failed to keep ahead of rivals Sharp Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. in flat panel TVs and lost its lead in the portable music industry to Apple with its massively popular iPod player.
The market liked the sound of what it was hearing today, with shares of Sony rising 1.75 percent to 4,080 yen as of midday, outperforming the benchmark Nikkei average’s 0.68 percent gain.
Fellow Taffy-boy Stringer, holds dual British and U.S. citizenship and will become the first foreigner to run Sony.
The company are expected to announce its intention to make the proposed management changes before noon (10 pm EST) today, to be made official at a board meeting scheduled for after a general shareholders’ meeting in June.
Sony
7 March, 2005
ASA Reports Bulldog DSL Not “The Ultimate Broadband Experience”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has dished out a mixed ruling on a complaint about claims made by Bulldog (owned by Cable & Wireless) for its 4Mbps broadband service.
Three complaints were made, but only in one instance was the complaint upheld. The challenged statements were:
1. “the ultimate broadband experience”
2. “the peak of speed”
3. “makes other broadband services look like dial-up”.
The ASA ruled that Bulldog’s claim that it offered the ‘ultimate broadband experience’ was misleading, but conceded that Bulldog was entitled to say it offered ‘the peak of speed’ and that it ‘makes other broadband services look like dial-up’ – at the time of the advert.
The company’s online promotion, run last summer, bigged up their services like Mohammed Ali in a boasting mood: ‘It’s the ultimate broadband experience. Makes other broadband services look like dial-up. … Bulldog 4 gives customers in central London the peak of speed and value.’
The ASA ruled that, at the time, it was not accurate to say that the service was the ultimate broadband experience, although it was the fastest available and Bulldog had been named Best Consumer Broadband ISP 2004 in the industry’s awards.
Bulldog seems to have become unstuck by the success of their own advertising, with customers instantly clambering for a piece of the ‘ultimate broadband experience’.
The rapid increase in customer numbers following the launch of the service significantly affected service quality, and complaints started to roll in.
The ASA ruled: ‘the severe customer service difficulties that all Bulldog customers had experienced after the appearance of the online advertisement and the significantly reduced speeds some Bulldog 4 customers had experienced meant the claim that the advertiser’s service offered “the ultimate broadband experience” was likely to mislead.’
Interestingly, the ASA said that much of the evidence for the poor service had come from Web forum discussions – and they confirm that this is the first time they’ve used this type of input.
Despite all the online moaning and service difficulties, the ASA ruled that Bulldog was still entitled to say that its service offered ‘the peak of broadband speeds’, as ‘many Bulldog 4 customers had benefited from the full speed 4Mbps service.’
The ASA concluded that, ‘because the advertisers were able to offer 4Mbps broadband, which was the fastest home broadband service available at the time, the advertisement appeared, the claim was justified.’
How times have changed. From August to 8Mbit from UK online.
The ASA also agreed with Bulldog’s assessment that, ‘if the starting point for broadband was 512kbps, it was approximately 10 times the speed of standard dial-up; the Bulldog 4Mbps connection was eight times the speed of a 512kbps connection’.
In other words, it agreed that that it was fair to say that Bulldog 4 made other broadband services ‘look like dial-up’.
The ASA continued with this Olympic-length sentence (take a deep breath before proceeding):
The Authority acknowledged the claim was likely to be seen by consumers as an expression of the advertisers” opinion about their services, but nevertheless considered that the severe customer service difficulties that all Bulldog customers had experienced after the appearance of the online advertisement and the significantly reduced speeds some Bulldog 4 customers had experienced meant the claim that the advertisers” service offered “the ultimate broadband experience” was likely to mislead.
The Authority asked the advertisers not to promise a service standard that could not be provided in future advertisements.
The lessons to be learnt for both Bulldog and other ISPs is that you’ve got to be able to walk the talk and ensure that you have the resources to cope with the results of your advertising campaigns.
Bulldog Broadband
4 March, 2005
Bill Gates, KBE Arise
Microsoft co-founder and chairman, Bill Gates received an honorary knighthood from ‘er Majesty the Queen today.
Bill Gates, 48 was dead chuffed to receive the award, saying it was “a great honour” to be recognised for his business skills and for his work on poverty reduction.
The entrepreneur – the richest man in the world worth an estimated £28bn. – was handed an insignia to make him a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, an honour that dates back to 1917 (although monarchs have been creating knights for centuries).
The ceremony took place amongst all the pomp and grandeur of the formal state-rooms at the palace, and involved Gates kneeling in front of the Queen, and getting a gentle tap on the shoulder with a sword.
Gates was granted a private audience with the Queen after the ceremony, and reported that they spoke about using computers (perhaps Her Majesty was having trouble with her Windows installation?)
As an American citizen, Gates can’t use the title “Sir” but he is entitled to put the letters KBE after his name.
Gates joins a select band of honorary knights including Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof, film director Steven Spielberg, Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the mighty Spike Milligan.
Gates and his wife Melinda are well known for their charitable work, investing millions in research for an Aids vaccine and a scholarship scheme to enable the brightest students to go to Cambridge University.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is currently working on a global health programme in the developing world.
Not everyone loves old Billy though, and Microsoft have been convicted of anti-competitive behaviour in the USA and are currently being investigated in Europe.
Microsoft
Bill Gates bio
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
2 March, 2005
Frontier Silicon Raises $28m For DAB And Mobile TV Chip Tech
Frontier Silicon, the British company that makes chips for mobile digital television and digital radio products, has completed it US$28 million (€21m/£14.5m) investment round funding.
Irish venture capital firm ACT led the US$28 million investment in Frontier Silicon, with other participants in the venture funding round being Apax Partners, AltaBerkeley Venture Partners, Quilvest and Bluerun Ventures (formerly known as Nokia Venture Partners).
Frontier Silicon has developed two new products, the Apollo chip and Kino chip, which allow mobile phones to receive and record television programmes on their mobile phones, electronic organisers or MP3 players.
Anthony Sethill, founder and chief executive of Frontier Silicon, said that the money raised would be used for product development and marketing purposes.
He boldly predicted that half of all mobile phones would be capable of receiving television programmes within a year or so at an additional cost to the user of under $50 (€37/£26).
Frontier Silicon currently employs 60 people between its English, Hong Kong and Chinese operations and boasted a turnover of more than $30 million (€22.7m/£15.6m) in 2004.
“This latest investment allows us to aggressively target and drive market share in the emerging mobile digital television market in the same way that we have established our chips in over 70 percent of DAB digital radios,” said Anthony Sethill.
Frontier Silicon produces chips for DAB digital radios, with its customers including such industry heavyweights as Bang & Olufsen, Grundig, Hitachi, Philips and Samsung.
The company also delivered the world’s first complete system-on-chip designs for DAB digital radio as well as the world’s first Combined Digital TV and Radio Chip.
Frontier Silicon
1 March, 2005
Promo Only MPE: DRM Within The Music Industry
Destiny Media Technologies has announced a new version of its proprietary anti-piracy and digital distribution system, Promo Only MPE 1.1, designed to secure electronic music distribution within the music industry.
The new system serves up a host of enhanced features including a new user interface to improve accessibility and ease of use; the ability to download entire albums and samples; improvements to the email management; higher quality previews and multi-label support.
“With the new functionality and multi label support, we can open the system up to other labels,” said Steve Vestergaard, Destiny CEO, “The system is ready for adoption by the entire music industry.”
Promo Only MPE has been developed to help the music industry combat the ongoing issue of piracy and to gain the benefits of digital technology – quicker distribution and reduced costs.
A lot of piracy originates from within the industry and, not surprisingly, those ‘Promo only, not for resale’ stickers haven’t exactly put a stop to it. DJ shedding their promo tracks isn’t new. Anyone who’s pawed through the racks in second hand music stores can attest to that.
In an industry clearly riddled with mistrust, Promo Only MPE uses a sophisticated security system that ‘locks down’ the distributed content and allows labels to track who is accessing their property.
Each song is uniquely encrypted so that only those with the MPE program can access it. In addition, an ID code specific to each individual user is applied when a song is requested; meaning that only registered users can access the song and, once installed, the ID cannot be moved to unauthorised computers.
Promo Only seems well chuffed with that fact that the MPE system has surpassed 1,500 registered users signed-on to the service – industry leader Universal Music Group (UMG) has been using the service since its launch and has distributed over 200 tracks to radio so far and Clear Channel Communications have made the system available to all of its stations across the country.
“The new build was modified with the customers’ ease of use in mind,” gushed Dean Ernst, Director of the MPE project at Promo Only. “The response to version 1.1 has been unprecedented and reflective of the overwhelming number of users signed-on to date.”
Personally, we could think of a few DJs who won’t be too pleased to have to start messing about with DRM every time they’re sent a new release. They might just end up playing the tracks that are easy for them to access.
Destiny Media Technologies
Promo Only MPE 1.1.
25 February, 2005