Digital-Lifestyles

Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

  • DirectTV Sells TiVo Stake. TiVo Reacts with Updates

    Trouble at TiVo this week – DirectTV, controlled by News Corp, has sold its 55% equity stake in the PVR company. TiVo still has a contract to supply DirectTV with PVRs until February 2007, but news of the sale caused the company’s shares to drop 14.5%.

    The news comes only a few days after DirectTV vice chairman Eddy Hartenstein resigned from TiVo’s board. These two events have cause others to speculate that DirectTV may wish to bring in a new PVR supplier, such as NDS.

    DirectTV is TiVo’s biggest source of subscribers, a dependence that was causing concern to observers.

    As more manufacturers continue to launch PVR product lines, TiVo’s subscription model is making less sense to consumers: why pay a US$12.95 (€10.74) monthly fee for a programme guide? However, by offering features not found on other PVRs such as home networking, TiVo expects to exceed 10 million subscribers by 2008 – though figures stood at just 1.6 million at the beginning of May this year.

    TiVo’s home networking, now a free add-on, allows subscribers to use their television to display photographs, and to stream music to their stereo systems. The feature works on wired and wireless networks by connecting a network adapter to the USB port on the TiVo Series 2 box.

    TiVo have also announced that they are working to expand this functionality so that films and music downloaded to a PC from the internet, can be played back on televisions and stereos.

    Nikon have just partnered with TiVo to showcase professional photography on subscribers’ televisions through Nikon’s Legends Behind the Lens promotion. Also, purchasers of some CoolPix digital cameras will be able to use PictureProject software to upload images to their TiVo box.

    DirectTV

    TiVo

    NikonNet

  • BT Trialling Fibre to the Home

    Quick – move to Martlesham Heath, Suffolk. 1,500 businesses and residents in three UK locations, Suffolk, Milton Keynes and Docklands are to take part in a one year trial of fibre optic broadband connections, running to September 2005.

    The properties will be linked directly to BT exchanges by glass fibre, upgrading connections to an end-to-end internet protocol network – something that’s go to come to the entire country sooner or later.

    Paul Reynolds, BT wholesale chief executive has stated that BT will not go out and replace all of the copper wires in the country if the trial is a success: only new building developments will have fibre installed. “At this stage we don’t envisage a widespread deployment of fibre to the premises or the cabinet in the near or medium term,” i.e. it would be hideously expensive. “While we believe the use of fibre can help deliver better operating costs in terms of maintenance, we need to balance this against the cost of installation and systems developments. These trials will help to shape our thinking and help us make strategic investment decisions.”

    BT have also announced a five year plan to replace the old switched network to properly carry voice and data services, with migrations beginning in 2006.

    BT announce their timetable

  • US On-line Gaming: US$4 Billion by 2008

    Online gaming is growing rapidly. Even miserable old souls like me who can’t stand wizards, Wookies and the thought of being thrashed at Counter Strike by some smug 14 year old whose reflexes are yet to be destroyed by years of gin have signed up for the odd Massively Multilayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG).

    A new report from In-Stat/MDR makes some striking claims about the growth of the US market – they estimate it will expand from a measly US$1 billion (€818 million) to a much more lucrative US$4 billion (€3.27 billion) by 2008. Much of this income will come from in-game advertising.

    Aside from the growing awareness and acceptability of online gaming, the report states that falling costs will spur growth – when online gaming costs as much as watching television, then it’ll really take off.

    The report claims that online gaming costs about US$1 per hour, opposed to US$0.13 for watching TV. I thought the US$1/h figure was a little high, so decided to run my own numbers: a quick calculation shows that my 16 hours of Eve per week sets me back about €0.18 (US$0.21) per hour. I’m not factoring in my broadband connection costs there, because I use that for other things. Honest. Given that many online game players can easily rack up 40 hours a week plus, then cost per hour on a monthly subscription can often fall below €0.07 (US$0.09). But then, they have no friends.

    Advertising in games is, as previously reported here, growing alongside the MMORPG field. In-Stat/MDR senior analyst Eric Mantion. States: “The secret strength of online games will be when the volumes of people playing grow to the point where advertisers will start buying ads that will not only be interactive, but also targeted at specific demographics of players.”

    In-Stat/MDR hypothesise that half the US population will be playing online games by 2008, which is somewhat optimistic. My own finger in the air guess is about 25%, taking age of population, literacy and competition from less interactive entertainment into account.

    Buy Quafe Ultra!

    In-Stat/MDR’s report

  • China: 300 Million Mobile Users by 2005

    The Chinese Ministry for Industry has released new figures which demonstrate the vast scale of the mobile market in China, and its potential for growth.

    Although the percentage of mobile phone owners in China will still be relatively low at just 24.5% of the population in 2005, this will still mean 300 million subscribers. In contrast, approximately 65% of Europeans own a mobile phone, with the US catching up at 50%.

    Currently, China’s 295,700,000 mobile phones account for half of all money spent communications. There are still another 800 million potential customers to reach, though the barriers of bringing access to rural areas and the cost of services must yet be dealt with.

    Chinese mobile users send 300 million text messages a day – accounting for one third of the World’s total 510 billion of SMS sent every in 2003. Not bad for something that was tacked onto GSM as a afterthought and costs network operators virtually nothing to handle.

    China Mobile

  • Microsoft’s New Patent on Clicking

    Microsoft have a new patent, relating to launching applications on PDAs. The patent describes launching different programs according to how many times a hardware button is pressed, for example one press for Contacts, twice for Calendar, three times for Hover Bovver.

    If you still have a digital watch, it’s exactly the same technique you use every six months when the clocks change and you have to remember how to set the damn thing. Thankfully, this MS patent only applies to hardware buttons on PDAs running Microsoft’s PocketPC operating system.

    The irony is not lost on Digital Lifestyles, as we reported last week that Microsoft have just joined a group whose very existence to is prevent obstructive patents and overhaul the US Patent and Trademark Office, renowned for issuing daft patents. We’re also reminded of our very own BT’s claim on owning the patent on hyperlinks.

    Microsoft’s patent and licensing programme

    BT’s hyperlink patent

  • Federal Trade Commission Wants to Get Tough on Bad Patents

    Using intellectual property as a form of harassment is on the rise in the US and Europe, and there seems to be no stopping it. US patent laws were last revised in 1952 and many industry leaders claim that they are not relevant to business today.

    The Federal Trade Commission is teaming up with Cisco, Intel, eBay, Microsoft, Genetech and others to form a working group to find a solution to the problem of anti-competitive patents and to make the US patent system more equipped to deal with technical patents.

    FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson announced the group after a high-level conference on patent reform, Ideas into Action – though the group is yet to be given a name.

    Companies and individuals “troll” by exploiting vague patents to either prevent competitors from operating in a particular field or for extracting “license fees” for technologies that may only be distantly related to intellectual property actually in question. Often patent harassment is the sole revenue stream for a company.

    3,000 patent examiners in the US handle 350,000 patent applications per year, allowing an average of 17 to 25 hours to check whether a patent application is valid or not. This means that a lot of nonsense gets through – academic studies claim that 95% of all US patents should not have been issued in the first place. Japan and Europe still have a poor showing at 65%.

    The FTC wants to make it easier to challenge a patent with the Patent Office without having to go to court, and to limit the award of treble damages in cases.

    Ideas Into Action

    The Federal Trade Commission

  • Cable and Wireless Buy Bulldog – What’s the Threat to BT?

    Cable and Wireless’ recent purchase of Bulldog means that they acquire four years of local loop unbundling experience, 38 ready-equipped exchanges and a number of well-marketed, innovative products. All for the bargain price of UK£18.6 million (€28 million) – though Bulldog’s net assets at the end of 2003 were only UK£1.6 million (€2.4 million). This puts C&W in a position to offer unique services, and not just resell products from BT Wholesale.

    Bulldog have long been critical of BT, and have said some fairly dramatic things over the last few months. My own personal favourite quote was from Richard Greco, when talking to The Register in 2001: “Oftel needs to force BT to move. And if BT doesn’t, then Oftel should point the gun – and pull the trigger.” However, he was quite gushing about BT when agreed to carry their SDSL products some months later: “It really is a powerful combination.”

    Bulldog’s frustration at BT stemmed from the glacial pace that the communications giant was unbundling the local loop. Bulldog have installed their own equipment into 38 exchanges, a figure that C&W now want to raise to 200. They will doubtless use this position to tempt more ISPs to jump from bitstream services to LLU – as C&W chief Francesco Caio said in a statement: “The acquisition of Bulldog will accelerate our ability to deliver directly connected DSL solutions for our existing and potential customers with an experienced team specialising in LLU services.”

    Bear in mind that it’s not just BT that is causing frustration with LLU – across Europe the entire process has been slow and as yet only a small percentage of lines have been unbundled.

    BT has already demonstrated that it’s worried about complaints about its LLU conduct and progress by making huge cuts to wholesale prices and promising faster progress. With C&W breathing down its neck even more, expect those exchanges to be unbundled faster than ever before.

    About Bulldog

  • BT to Offer Itemised Broadband Bills

    BT Wholesale will be offering itemised bills to its customers from 28th May. Subscribers will be able to view each user’s time spent online and the amount of bandwidth used.

    “Previously, BT wholesale gave service providers the start and stop time for each user. With the improved functionality, we are able to record a breakdown of the bytes used both upstream and downstream,” said a spokesperson for BT Wholesale.

    BT

  • Intel’s New Approach to Selling Chips

    Microprocessors are old news – they’re now so mainstream that it’s no longer a surprise to see them advertised on television or on billboards, as it was ten or fifteen years ago. Intel know that it’s just them and AMD in the consumer processor market – and now that you can’t win on clock speed, cache size or bus width any more, they need to make their products appear different and sexy to make those billboards interesting again. Let’s face it all those claims about clock speed were dubious anyway – there are too many factors involved and now that AMD don’t even bother publicising processor speeds, it makes a nonsense out of comparisons (that’s right – your Athlon 2800 doesn’t run at anything like 2.8gHz. That’s just a marketing number to make you think it does).

    Cue a new shift in Intel’s product emphasis – it’s not the processor, it’s the chip set. Intel now want you to see the benefits of having a motherboard built round their platform. Now that chip sets are working harder for their money, being the gateway to your PC’s multimedia and communications features, Intel want you to know about it.

    Grantsdale is heading your way in June, and is pitched to lead a new generation of entertainment PCs. Just the sort of thing that Intel want to see sitting in your living room.

    Marketing a processor just wouldn’t give Intel the clout they need to displace other pieces of consumer electronics in the living room – they need to show the full range of functions that a chip set can perform to show that you’re going to be getting the DVD playback, encoding, games and internet performance that will merit a space under your television.

    Grantsdale integrates a lot of features that would previously require more electronics to pull off – including Dolby audio and 3D graphics, allowing PC manufacturers to build smaller, cheaper, quieter boxes.

    Intel will be spending a huge amount of money to make sure you know why chipsets are important and why you would want one of theirs. As AMD have no visibility in this area, they’re going to have to come up with something fast.

    Oh, and apparently, Intel are making a special effort to train retail salespeople in Grantsdale’s benefits. I look forward to some amusing conversations with the staff in Dixons in the summer then.

    More news on Grantsdale as it appears.

    Intel’s Chipsets

  • Clear Channel Entertainment Acquires Restrictive Patent on Live Concert CDs

    Clear Channel has purchased a patent relating to the recording then sale of a CDs at a live performance – and are claiming that it relates to every venue in the US.

    Clear Channel operate a service in their venues called Instant Live, where fans can pre-order a recording before a gig and then pick it up at the venue. Clear Channel purchased the patent for this from DiscLive, who have a similar set up. Now Clear Channel are asserting that the patent doesn’t just cover their 130 venues, but all venues in the US.

    This all might have something to do with the fact that DiscLive recently predicted it would gross about US$500,000 (€412,600) selling live recordings at gigs this spring.

    Clear Channel, (somehow recently nominated by the Fortune 500 as one of America’s Most Admired Companies) have granted US$1 licenses to small bands using the DiscLive service, but are telling everyone else that they can’t sell live CDs at gigs. Apparently, the patent doesn’t apply to bands who sell their disks days after the performance, only when the recording is sold immediately afterwards.

    Steve Simon, Clear Channel executive vice president and the director of Instant Live told the Rolling Stone without a hint of irony: /2We want to be artist-friendly. But it is a business, and it’s not going to be ‘we have the patent, now everybody can use it for free.’”

    Expect test cases to begin soon.

    The Rolling Stone covers the story