Amazon Acquiries Lovefilm, Looks to VOD
January 2011
U.S.-based e-commerce company Amazon announced it was acquiring Lovefilm, a Netflix-like company based in the U.K. for an undisclosed sum.
Although anonymous sources have said that the price Amazon paid was US$200 million, more recent reports say that number is too low. Amazon already owned 42% of Lovefilm and was an early investor in the company.
Lovefilm has 1.6 million subscribers in the U.K., Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. In May 2010, Lovefilm’s online streaming service debuted, and now comprises 20% of its rentals. It was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in London, England.
• Amazon has its own global CDN service.
• Amazon already has an online movie rental service.
• Amazon owns movie database IMDb.
• Amazon may offer free streaming to prime members.
The full article is available in the January 2011 IPTV Bulletin by MRG, Inc. To subscribe, go to: www.mrgco.com/bulletin.html
Netflix Button Creates Buzz at CES
January 2011
While Smart TVs will not over take STBs, as stated earlier, a partial exception could be the new Netflix button showing up on TV remotes (or maybe a Lovefilm button in Europe). With a button like this, Smart TVs could easily begin to nibble away at SP’s VOD revenues for movies. Assuming Netflix could get premium studios (including HBO) to move up their release windows (after of course Netflix raises prices or implements PPV [Pay-Per-View]), Netflix will have solved the problems mentioned above, but its profitability will take a serious hit as a result of paying more for content.
The full article is available in the January 2011 IPTV Bulletin by MRG, Inc. To subscribe, go to: www.mrgco.com/bulletin.html
Google Battles Apple for Dominance in Tablet/Second Screen Market
January 2011
There were approximately 80 new tablets on display to compete with tablet leader Apple, who does not even exhibit at CES 2011. While it’s become clear in recent years that the “smart” or “connected” home is important to the future of the IPTV Industry (including what’s new in OTT or Internet Video), it hasn’t been clear how important the Smart TV will be as compared with the tablet devices like the iPad.
Because Apple’s iPad still dominates in the “second screen” (tablet) category, no other tablet maker really qualifies aside from those based on Android v3 (“Honeycomb”), the OS from Google dedicated to the tablet. For CES, at least, Apple’s only competitor is the XOOM tablet from Motorola, which has the (dual core) processing power in addition to Honeycomb, plus a very impressive movie display capability to show 16x9 movies at up to 1080p HD playback and the ability to transfer video to a large screen display either via HDMI or Wi-Fi.
While Motorola won best of show kudos for the XOOM, it also won much recognition for its Android v2.2-based Smartphone Atrix, which, like the XOOM, is targeted at the Apple iPhone and iPad, respectively. Samsung came in second with its Galaxy line of tablets, based on Android 2 OS. Sony, surprisingly, was not showing a tablet, and LG, as aforementioned, was not showing its Honeycomb-based tablet, but was stating that it plans to release one in the first quarter 2011. Of the 80 tablets shown on the floor, none other than the XOOM had more than Android 2.2 OS or Windows 7 OS from Microsoft. Samsung’s 7-series and Dell’s Streak line both run on Windows 7. It’s obvious that Apple’s iOS and Google’s Honeycomb OS have locked horns for a drawn out competition. If Google releases a STB version of its Android OS, that would make for a world-class match up of 3-on-3 that could advance the cause of multi-screen display over IP devices for several years to come.
The full article is available in the January 2011 IPTV Bulletin by MRG, Inc. To subscribe, go to: www.mrgco.com/bulletin.html
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