The Online Reporter back issues from Saturday, February 16:
Dolby brings surround sound to mobile devices.
Feb 16, 2008 ... One of the joys of watching a movie in the theater is the total sound experience`imagine "The Perfect Storm" without being engulfed in the sounds of the winds and the ocean. At the other extreme of sound quality has been the tinny, garbled noises coming out of mobile phones. ...
Alcatel-Lucent WiMAXes out.
Feb 16, 2008 ... - Five New Deals - Advanced Technology: Fixed, Nomadic, Mobile - More Device Makers Submit to Interoperability Tests Financially and organizationally challenged Alcatel-Lucent sees WiMAX as the wave that'll carry it to success. This week at the ...
AT&T opens free Wi-Fi floodgates.
Feb 16, 2008 ... - Strikes Deal with Starbucks; - What will Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, Cox et al do? AT&T took another giant step this week in making free Wi-Fi near ubiquitous in the US by striking a remarkable deal with coffee store chain Starbucks. America's Latte ...
Yahoo, Microsoft spar over bid; news corp makes overtures.
Feb 16, 2008 ... These are hectic times at troubled Internet outfit Yahoo. Even as it rebuffed Microsoft's acquisition bid came reports that media moghul Rupert Murdoch was sniffing around the company. Yahoo Says to Microsoft Just hours after Yahoo officially rejected Microsoft's ...
Microsoft and Yahoo just coy while they think about marriage terms.
Feb 16, 2008 ... Faultline's Peter White, who's never been a Microsoft apologist, wrote the following analysis and prediction of the Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo. Several Wall Street types we talked to agreed. A few maintain that Microsoft will have to up its offer, however. People get used to ...
This week in content deals.
Feb 16, 2008 ... <Pre> This Week in Content Deals Companies Details Yahoo, T-Mobile T-Mobile and Yahoo have signed an agreement to bring Yahoo's oneSearch to the T-Mobile European market. Azingo, Broadcom ...
This week in finance deals.(Table)
Feb 16, 2008 ... <Pre> This Week in Finance Deals CompaniesDetails Yahoo, Maven Yahoo acquired Maven Networks, provider of online video and ad services, for a cool $160 million. Microsoft, Microsoft is on a shopping spree and has bought ...
Telcos, cablecos on a collision course.(BROADBAND BEAT)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - Will Satcos Be caught in the Middle The first Broadband Scorecard for the quarter ending December 31, 2007 is attached. Not every company has reported yet so we will update and send them out until the list is complete. A few things that stand out are: - ...
Comcast broadband growth slows; still brings in $6.4b revenues.(BROADBAND BEAT)
Feb 16, 2008 ... US cable giant Comcast added 1.7 million broadband subscribers during 2007, an increase of 15% but down from the 1.9 million it added in 2006. At the end of 2007 Comcast had 13.2 million broadband subscribers, 27% of the residences that its wires pass. The broadband ...
Cox firing on all cylinders.(BROADBAND BEAT)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - 3.7m Broadband Subscribers - "The Pioneer of the Bundle - Adding Phone Customers Like Crazy Cox Communications' broadband subscriber count increased to 3.7 million at the end of 2007, an 11.3% annual increase. Other highlights from Cox' year end report ...
Qwest: broadband, pay-TV up; home phones down; thinking wireless broadband.(BROADBAND BEAT)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Qwest added 95,000 broadband subscribers in its fourth quarter 2007, fewer than the 165,000 it added in the fourth quarter 2006. For the full year 2007, Qwest added 473,000 subscribers and at year-end had 2.6 million broadband subscribers, a 22% increase over 2006. ...
The satellite broadband market opportunity.(BROADBAND BEAT)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Homes in great swatches of the US are physically unable to get broadband access because the wires and networks that pass them are unsuitable for broadband. The wireless broadband technologies WiMAX and LTE are too far in the future and still unproven. That's why Pike & Fischer ...
Max telecom rolls out WiMAX in Bulgaria.(BROADBAND BEAT)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Bulgarian telecom operator Max Telecom said that it had completed the first phase of its WiMAX rollout. The deployment is said to represent Bulgaria's first personal broadband mobile communications service with coverage now available in ten cities including the capital Sofia as ...
ThePlatform and Corus entertain.(SHOW TIME)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Canadian media and entertainment company Corus Entertainment will use broadband video manager and publisher the Platform to deliver broadband video for Corus's specialty TV portals. ThePlatform will provide video management for Treehouse TV, a Canadian network for preschoolers; ...
Wavexpress gets HD channels from on Networks.(SHOW TIME)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Broadband technology and services provider Wavexpress has announced a content license with ON Networks, a media company with 26 HD online video programs. Wavexpress will feature five of ON Networks' shows on its free Internet television application, TVTonic. The ...
SpiralFrog-no ribbit just rock.(ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES)(Website overview)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - From Tadpole to 1.27m Unique Visitors Monthly SpiralFrog is a free music download site that has the support of major labels as well as a "slew of independents" according to its senior VP of marketing and sales George Hayes. Hayes took some time to talk to us about ...
NovaTunes: new label, new business model.(ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Internet-based music label NovaTunes has come out with a promotion, distribution, and purchasing platform that is fair to artists and seems to trust and embrace the consumer, a different approach than usually taken by current record labels. Launched with a roster of 50 ...
LG Inks music deal with Omnifone.(ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES)
Feb 16, 2008 ... LG has struck a deal with mobile music firm Omnifone to offer unlimited music to its customers through a range of high speed 3G and HSPDA handsets it plans to launch in the first half of this year. Underpinning LG's move is Omnifone's new MusicStation Max program, which will let ...
Jamba claims first DRM-free euro mobile music.(ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES)(Digital Rights Management)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Mobile content provider Jamba (known as Jamster in the States) said this week that it would be the first company of its kind in Europe to offer music on a cell phone without DRM. The firm says it has signed a deal with music label EMI that lets the company be one of the few to ...
RealNetworks to sell Envivio encoding systems for mobile devices.(ENABLING TECHNOLOGY)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Widespread availability of video streaming to mobile devices appears certain. That'll require highly capable encoding technology. Envivio, which says it's "the leading technology provider of IP video convergence encoding solutions from mobile to HD," has signed up RealNetworks ...
Yahoo beefs up video platform with Maven purchase.(ENABLING TECHNOLOGY)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Yahoo has acquired Maven Networks for $160 million to bolster its video offerings for Web publishers and advertisers. Maven's video platform lets publishers deliver consumer video through media management, workflow and flexible media players as well as boost video ad inventory ...
Ippi allows mobile phone messaging from the TV.(ENABLING TECHNOLOGY)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Swedish start-up In View AB has released an interactive TV device called ippi that converts two billion TVs worldwide into communication centers for videos, photos, voice messages and e-mail by using mobile networks. The device is connected to the TV, which is converted to a ...
Fusebox provides online video companies with fast download technology.(ENABLING TECHNOLOGY)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Canadian startup Fusenet Inc has released the first version of its Fusebox technology for streaming and downloading content from ISPs around the world. According to the company, the technology went through several months of beta-testing with an initial group of 160,000 ...
Microsoft, a shot of GPS and now it's an ALKaholic.(ENABLING TECHNOLOGY)
Feb 16, 2008 ... ALK Technologies is teaming up with Microsoft to provide product and business searches on its personal navigation software. It is bringing Microsoft's Live Search API to its CoPilot Live--a mobile phone navigation add-on for use by cars, bicycles and pedestrians. CoPilot Live ...
New forecast for networked digital home.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Ireland's Research and Markets, which does some very good and advanced market research in digital media matters, says that home networking has recently entered the digital media era with networkable consumer electronics (CE) devices such as TV sets or networked media devices such as media ...
Mobile Internet devices to appeal to wide variety of consumers.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Mobile Internet devices are rapidly emerging as a new class of consumer electronics and will appeal to a wide variety of consumers, according to a study by ABI Research. Forecasting dramatic growth over the next five years for these always-connected devices, the research firm ...
Internet advertising grows, Google actually loses market share.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Some have embraced the notion that print media is on its way out, but we've reiterated that other traditional electronic media is also rapidly shifting to all-Internet. For the past few years, Google has lorded over online media and advertising, but according to recent data ...
34.8% of Chinese mobile users listen to mobile music.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... While Nokia commands the market share in the emerging Chinese mobile media market, it seems Sony Ericsson is driving content consumption. Mobile media researcher M:Metrics this week announced the first large-scale study of mobile media consumption in China. China is the world's ...
Handheld devices drop 53.2% during 2007 Q4.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Handheld devices shipped only 683,004 units in the last quarter of 2007, a 53.2% drop when compared to the last quarter of 2006. Total global shipments dropped from 5.5 million units shipped in 2006 to barely over three million in 2007, a 44.3% decrease according to IDC's ...
Mobile TV -- everyone wants it until they try it.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Two reports released on Tuesday looked at mobile TV and found a startling conclusion: everyone wants it for their next phone but only if the quality isn't still worthless. A study by CNN and Ericsson showed that 34% of respondents ranked TV as the most in-demand mobile ...
2008 will be the year the mobile industry hits $1 trillion.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... In 20 years, the mobile industry has gone from nothing to one trillion dollars, a feat unequalled by any other industry, according to Research and Markets. In its newest report--icing up the Mobile Services Revenue Pie--says that world wide shipments of mobiles exceeded one ...
Writers getting 0% of a projected $6.6B market - who wouldn't strike?(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)
Feb 16, 2008 ... The US will see new multimedia platforms capture $12.6 billion in ad revenue by 2012 and over 50% - $6.6 billion -- will come from broadband multimedia advertising, a piece of which is the assumed reconciliation point for the Writers Guild of America. These numbers come from a new Parks ...
MPAA should hire college kids to do its counting.(LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS)(Motion Picture Association of America)
Feb 16, 2008 ... The MPAA has made headlines with its college student survey twice: first with saying students were responsible to $597 million or 44% of domestic losses from piracy, and then again with revising the number to less than $200 million or 15% of domestic losses. A new look at the report's ...
Melodeo helps BlackBerry go nuts.(ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES)(Brief article)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Mobile and online music and media service provider Melodeo will distribute its nuTsie mobile music service on BlackBerry smartphones this spring. NuTsie will be featured on the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve, as well as the Built for BlackBerry website and Research In Motion's ...
RealNetworks shows 'entertainment as a service' for mobiles.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... RealNetworks chief Rob Glaser outlined the company's "Entertainment as a Service" this week at Mobile World Congress Barcelona. The goal is to "enable mobile operators to move into the era of mobile personalization" by providing music, games and videos. The result is that ...
Nokia goes ballistic at Mobile World Congress.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - Launches personal media sharing community, mobile ad network, new devices Finnish mobile juggernaut Nokia went gangbusters at the just concluded Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona launching a personal media sharing community, a mobile ad network and four cool new ...
Yahoo debuts new mobile service.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Yahoo is rolling out a new mobile communications service called oneConnect that combines integrated mobile messaging with a socially-connected address book. The new service is supposed to aggregate multiple communication tools including email, instant messaging, text messaging ...
Microsoft gets dangerous.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Microsoft is acquiring mobile software and services firm Danger Inc. While Microsoft did not disclose the financial details, GigaOm's Om Mallik reported that the transaction was valued at a cool $500 million. Danger, which had raised $144 million in venture backing, ...
Paramount Pictures launches business unit for mobile entertainment.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Paramount has created a new business unit called Paramount Mobile Entertainment (PME) to develop mobile entertainment and alternative distribution models for the studio. PME has been set up under the studio's digital division Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, which ...
NDS and UDcast, protecting mobile TV for future generations.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... News Corp subsidiary and digital pay TV solutions provider NDS and wireless IP broadcast software firm UDcast have paired up to provide content protection for DVB-H Mobile TV services delivered to mobile devices. NDS has integrated its VideoGuard Mobile TV protection system for ...
LifeVibes is the musical life of Samsung's newest party.(MOBILE MEDIA)(NXP Software )(Brief article)
Feb 16, 2008 ... NXP Software is giving Samsung high-end MP3 functionality and quality by putting its LifeVibes MusicPlayer on Samsung's SGHF250 mobile phone. LifeVibes supports local playback, streaming and downloading services. It supports Microsoft Windows Media and 3GPP compliant playback, ...
Migo migrates music to most mobiles from PCs.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Content mobility software provider Migo has let loose its Migo Mobile Tunes, a way for consumers to group, organize and sync music between their PC and mobile phone. Migo Mobile Tunes lets consumers move their favorite tracks from their PCs to mobiles by easing the process and ...
A new founding member, handsets and strategy -- a very good week for LiMo.(MOBILE MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... This week, the LiMo Foundation announced new partnerships, a new strategy, success of its partners, and the first LiMo handsets ever. LiMo has been busy and it plans to keep on trucking. LiMo Foundation is a worldwide league of mobile industry honchos working together ...
Motorola launches Mobile TV with navigation.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Motorola has developed a pocket sized personal media player with 2D and 3D GPS and Tele Atlas maps, points of interest, and voice activated directions. They call the Motorola Mobile TV DH01n, catchy. With the DH01n, consumers can watch live TV, personal media and on-demand ...
Novatel Wireless introduces a next gen USB broadband modem.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Wireless broadband solutions provider Novatel Wireless has rolled out its HSDPA/HSUPA mobile USB broadband modem designed to give Internet access over cellular data networks across the globe. The Ovation MC930D is optimized for Europe and can reach max download speeds of 7.2 ...
Packet Video give new features on that same old handset.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... PacketVideo has patented a new pocketsized mobile broadcast receiver that turns Wi-Fi enabled personal media players (PMPs) and phones into virtual mobile TVs. PacketVideo's mobile receiver decodes digital signals and recodes them for use on a mobile, sending it wirelessly to a ...
Yahoo releases live video streaming service.(ME MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - Live Blog Provides Progress Notes - Launches with Server Problems Last week Yahoo unveiled a new live video streaming service called Yahoo Live. The service seems to be very much like uStream, which lets anyone with a camera and Internet connection ...
Report: December 2007 sets record for online video consumption.(ME MEDIA)
Feb 16, 2008 ... ComScore's new Video Metrix service report, which measures online viewing behavior, said US Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during December. According to comScore, December sets a record for online video consumption since the company began collecting ...
Portable device makers flood Mobile World Congress with GPS, music, FM and megapixels.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... The only aspect of the devices launched at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona this week that interests our readers is the extent to which they can carry, play or receive video and audio files. There were a considerable number of new devices, and each of those we are reporting on ...
Xbox 360 shortage bad news for Sony, Apple.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... The bad news for Microsoft (and good news for Sony and Apple) is that there's a shortage of Xbox 360s in retail stores. The good news for Microsoft (and bad news for Sony and Apple) is that the shortage was caused by higher than expected sales, especially in the year-end buying period. ...
Samsung's See'N'Search brings Web to TV.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Samsung says a new See'N'Search set-top box it's developed monitors the channel guide and closed caption that accompanies a TV show and uses that information to display links to similar content it's found on the Net. By pressing a "more info" button on the remote (gawd, just what we ...
SanDisk believes good things come in twos.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... SanDisk, a big player in flash memory storage and "inventor of MegaSIM and microSD cards" has rolled out two new products for mobile handsets: a 16GB iNAND embedded flash drive and a TrustedFlash enabled memory card for mobile TV and video recording storage. SanDisk Embedded ...
Netflix, Best Buy plump for Blu-ray, snub HD-DVD.(PRODUCT WATCH)
Feb 16, 2008 ... The HD-DVD high-definition video format suffered another stinging blow with online movie rental service Netflix and consumer electronics chain Best Buy throwing their weight behind the rival Sony-developed Bluray format. Netflix Enters Its Blu Period Netflix said ...
Alcatel-Lucent, NEC partner on WiMAX rival LTE.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have entered into a "broad collaboration" including a joint venture that aims to accelerate development and deployment of LTE (Long Term Evolution), a next generation wireless broadband technology that offers speeds comparable to what consumers now have at home. ...
260 WiMAX Deployments in 110 countries.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... There are 260 commercial WiMAX deployments in 110 countries, according to the WiMAX Forum. Vendors have submitted 28 mobile WiMAX ...
LTE crowd fights back against WiMAX with new report.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - 400m LTE Subscribers, [euro]150b in Revenues by 2015 - Predicts High Acceptance in First & Third World Countries - WiMAX Forum Says We're Already There While WiMAX has dominated most of the news over the last year about next-generation wireless broadband, ...
Vodafone CEO on too many operating systems, WiMAX and LTE.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... - Says WiMAX Could Be Integrated into LTE In the flurry of talk about operating systems for mobile devices -- Android, Symbian, LiMo's Linux and Windows Mobile came some advice from the man running the world's largest mobile phone service. Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin told ...
Intel reportedly has $2b to invest in Sprint's WiMAX operation.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Intel, which has reportedly already spent $1 billion developing WiMAX technology, is willing to invest upwards of $2 billion in a spinout of Sprint Nextel's Xohm WiMAX operation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Newly appointed Sprint Nextel director Ralph Whitworth is ...
First design for hybrid WiMAX phone shown.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Japan's NetIndex and Kaga Electronics plus Israel's Runcom Technologies have jointly developed a VoIP portable telephone that uses WiMAX (IEEE802.16e). It uses Runcom's WiMAX chipset. The unit also has a Wi-Fi capability and a browser for surfing the Net but what is significant ...
Indie Mobile to provide Groove Mobile with 70,000 independent tracks.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Mobile music service provider Groove Mobile has entered a worldwide licensing deal with Indie Mobile, which will extend Groove Mobile's independent music library to include multiple mobile content rights. These rights include full music tracks, videos and realtones, all of which ...
Torch Mobile looks to blaze a trail with Iris.(MOBILE INTERNET)(Company overview)(Brief article)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Torch Mobile and its next generation mobile Internet browser the Iris Browser are looking to spark some interest with the debut of both at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona. Torch Mobile is led by president George Staikos, a contributor to the WebKit project and other open ...
Orange and Nokia strengthen partnership.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Nokia and Orange have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to partner on additional, valuable services like location-based services, maps, gaming and mobile advertising. The MoU comes with a strong intent for a follow up strategic partnership by the middle of 2008 and is ...
T-Mobile flies Yahoo to Europe, leaves Google at the airport.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... -Yahoo and T-Mobile: A New Approach Yahoo and T-Mobile have announced a new strategic partnership to bring Yahoo's oneSearch mobile search service to European T-Mobile users by the end of March. This agreement will allow oneSearch to be the exclusive mobile search ...
Google dumped by T-Mobile, orders a Nokia with a slice of orange.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Nokia and Google have recently announced plans to integrate Google's search engine with Nokia's search application. Integration will begin in some markets with Nokia's N96, N78, 6210 Navigator and 6220 classic. Nokia is looking to make Google search available to all of its ...
Ericsson's CEO: mobile broadband, how sweet it is.(MOBILE INTERNET)
Feb 16, 2008 ... Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said 2007 was an amazing year for mobile broadband uptake, with TV changing from a broadcast base to a personalized experience. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Svanberg spoke about the strong uptake of 3G and HSPA last year. According to ...