Sky has announced three of its top Exec will be altering roles, we suspect, as they prepare to become more than just a satellite TV company.
Using its best management speak, the UK Satellite-overlord is “aligning its organisational structure to support sustained growth towards its target of 10 million direct-to-home customers in 2010.”
The favoured three will be stepping it up a gear, and far beyond having the key for the executive toilet, we suspect they’ll be getting a whole suite of bathroom facilities.
- Dawn Airey, who has been Managing Director of Sky Networks since 2003, becomes Managing Director, Channels and Services with overall responsibility for Sky’s multi-platform content strategy. The existing Sky Networks structure will be joined in the Channels and Services group by an enlarged interactive team that brings together all of Sky’s new media content on interactive TV, online and mobile platforms. She’ll assume additional responsibility for Sky’s joint ventures, wholesale distribution arrangements with cable companies and commercial relationships with third-party channels on the satellite platform.
- Mike Darcey, who joined Sky in 1998 and is currently Group Strategy Director, becomes Group Commercial and Strategy Director with extended responsibility for a new group that combines Sky’s Strategy, Future Technology, R&D and Business Development teams. In addition, he’ll take on a further responsibility to manage and develop Sky’s major commercial relationships in support of the company’s strategic goals
- Jon Florsheim, who joined Sky in 1994, becomes Managing Director, Customer Group in addition to his existing title of Chief Marketing Officer. The Customer Group brings together all of Sky’s expertise in sales, marketing and customer operations to create a seamless brand, product and service experience for customers. This team will lead the continued development and implementation of Sky’s multi-product strategy, including the launch of the company’s broadband offering in the second half of calendar 2006.
We think Mike Darcey sounds like he’s going to have the most fun, and certainly the most toys to play with.
James Murdoch, Sky’s Chief Executive, touches on where BSkyB is planning on going, as they “exploit content on multiple platforms and expand into adjacent areas of business.”
With the strength of BSkyB’s relationships with their customers, fear will be struck into the heart of many execs in many industries by the words “adjacent areas of business.”
T-Mobile was told to see the headmaster and returned with a derrier rouge after making exaggerated claims about its “web’n’walk” mobile Internet service.In a wave of PR-driven hyperbole 
T-Mobile had a valiant stab at a defence, arguing that their advert was all about making the distinction between Ye Olde Crappe WAP and their new, full Internet-access, web’n’walk service, adding that they had included the line, “subject to coverage”.
To the sound of a salvo of slapped wrists, the statement concluded that the ad, “was misleading because readers were likely to interpret the claim to refer to geographical network coverage. We told T-Mobile to avoid making such unconditional claims in future advertising.”
Sony Ericsson have announced their new M600 handset, a tri-band (900/1800/1900 plus UMTS 2100 for 3G data outside the US) jobbie, with Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3.0 operating systems.
Touted as a “fully-specified email tool and mobile phone”, the handset offers true multitasking, so a user can, for example, browse the Internet while chatting away on the phone.
For road warriors and shuffling suits, there’s the facility to read and edit PowerPoint, Word and Excel documents and Adobe PDF files on the move, with the popular Opera 8 browser provided for surfing the Internet.
In line with its business focus, there’s no built in camera, and Wi-Fi is an unfortunate omission too.
Internet big boys Google and Skype have teamed up with two venture capital firms, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, to invest a mighty wedge into Fon Technology, a Spanish startup looking to build a global network of Wi-Fi hotspots.
For Google and Skype, a deal with FON makes their web-based services more ubiquitously available, with developers gaining access to a new platform for creating and delivering services on a global scale.
“As we continue to grow, we will attract consumers for all three foneros categories and achieve our goal of creating a global WiFi nation. This is a great opportunity for ISP’s, bloggers, developers, early adopters, consumer electronics manufacturers and the ‘average Joe or Jane’ with a WiFi connection to make money by letting other foneros connect to the Net safely and simply,” he continued.
It’s been spluttering and wheezing in its sick bed for what seems like an eternity, but the latest figures from research firm IDC confirm that the prognosis isn’t good for the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
Although a bright Christmas period saw sales grow 37.6% over Q3, the trend remains resolutely downward, with the declining market segment driving PDAs into a market niche.
But don’t go ordering flowers for the PDA funeral quite yet, as IDC research analyst Ramon Llamas insists that it’s not all over for the PDA market, with plenty of smaller vendors remaining committed to a more niche PDA market.
With Palm winding down its PDA business and concentrating on its Treo smartphone range, Nelson argues that Palm will have difficulty competing against deep-pocketed rivals like Dell and HP who are currently ploughing big R&D budgets into similar products.
DAB radio (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is really taking off in the UK.
We thing that the sheer quality of BBC radio, 4 in particular, is a major reason why the UK is being seduced by DAB.
The continued growth of DAB is hoped to receive a further boost as uber-regulator, OfCom, plans to release further, new DAB-able spectrum.
BBC World have been busy bunnies of late, signing distribution deals all over the globe.
The video streams include the adverts that would be shown if BBC World were being shown on the TV in the region. As yet, BBC World aren’t charging their advertisers any extra to splash them on mobile screens – they’re seeing it as added value for them
In the 3/Hutchinson Australia deal, the subscribers are being asked to pay Au$4/month for unlimited access, Au$2/day or Au$0.50/two minutes.
They’ve been bustier than Jock McHasty in a rush at i-mate, as the PDA/smartphone vendor releases another addition to their range, the i-mate PDA-N – the company’s first GPS PDA.
The front of the slim device is dominated by a 2.83″ 240×320 pixels transmissive TFT-LCD screen supporting 64k colours, with a row of four buttons and a joystick below.
According to I-mate, the PDA-N notches up a rated battery life of 5 hours in GPS mode and 8 hours playing a looped video.
Battery: Removable rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery, 1,100mAH
Four months after releasing their first iTunes-enabled mobile phone, the disappointing Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola have had another stab at creating the perfect music phone.
The biggest complaint was the laughably feeble memory on the ROKR that could only hold a maximum of 100 iTunes songs – regardless of memory capacity – and a treacle-slow song transfer rate.
In a flurry of arty waffle, Steve Lalla, vice president and general manager for mass-market products at Motorola, explained that the, “L7 is really in what we call our ‘self-expression portfolio,’ where design and style is the key premise behind the product”.
A week ahead of its scheduled launch, smartphone bigwigs i-mate have revealed details of their latest model, the JAMin.
Switching from a 416 MHz Intel processor to a 200 MHz TI processor (we know it sounds like it must be slower but they’re not directly comparable), i-mate have stuck with the JAM form factor, adding a different button layout and twice the ROM.
Also known as the HTC Prophet (and O2 XDA Neo), the phone shouldn’t stir it up in the pocket department, measuring a compact 10.8 x 5.8 x 1.8cm and weighing 150g. Memory expansion is taken care of courtesy of a SD IO slot