Although Google does not publicly report financial information about Android, some figures have come out through the company’s legal battle with Oracle concerning copyright violation in the mobile OS’s programming.
In 2010, the mobile platform reported a net loss in each quarter even though it did earn Google $97.7 million in revenue in Q1.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said, “that adds up to a big loss for the whole year,” although he did not announce specific loss figures.
“Oracle sued Google in August 2010, saying Android infringes on its intellectual property rights to the Java programming language,” Reuters explains, adding the company, “contends that Google should not be able to deduct certain Android expenses for the purposes of copyright damages in the case.”
Google has denied any violations on the grounds that Java is open-source software language.
It might be interesting to see what Oracle stands to gain from the lawsuit if Google has been posting significant losses on the platform.
Telecommunication operators will be gathering at the CTIA Wireless trade show in New Orleans this week and expect to hear complaints about spectrum shortages and consolidations, according to Reuters.
U.S. mobile carriers have been challenging the FCC for more spectrum to meet the ever-increasing demand on bandwidth with the expansion of mobile video viewing and other usage. The top providers are also calling for mergers that will eliminate the fierce competition over resources.
The FCC has shown opposition to consolidations with its denial of AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile. The failed merger was very costly for AT&T, leaving other providers weary. Additionally, AT&T has been vocal regarding Verizon’s proposed spectrum deal, still being reviewed by regulators.
“Everybody is going to be talking about the fact that in the U.S. we have a spectrum crisis. That crisis is everywhere and it’s a crisis that is hitting everybody,” says Glenn Lurie, AT&T’s president of emerging enterprise and partnerships.
“Because of the uncertainty around spectrum availability, analysts expect vendors to use this year’s CTIA to aggressively promote technologies that promise to improve management of existing wireless network capacity,” adds Reuters. “One key topic will revolve around how operators manage the growth in demand for bandwidth-hungry services like video streaming, according to Mark Lowenstein, managing director at consulting firm Mobile Ecosystem.”
Just as other online services such as Hulu and AOL have ventured into the content creation business, Google is pushing forward its original programming on YouTube channels.
“YouTube said Wednesday it would spend $200 million to market original content through a variety of channels,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “So far, YouTube’s strategy isn’t to own content outright but partner with those who produce it and generate advertising revenue.”
The investment has created film-quality productions like the channel WIGS, which offers scripted dramatic series and short films featuring stars like Jennifer Garner and Julia Stiles. Impressively, WIGS has done all this on a tight budget.
“But with only modest funding from YouTube — it is giving channels only up to a few million dollars each, far less than the cost of a typical TV production — it is impossible to pay average industry salaries,” the article explains, adding actors and crew usually work for a $15/hour wage.
While YouTube isn’t looking to replace other sources of entertainment, the site definitely attracts a wealth of viewers — 750 million unique visitors a month, according to a recent comScore report.
In spite of the rise of streaming video on the Web, Americans are still watching 5 hours of television content daily on traditional TV sets.
Some 98 percent are watching on systems connected to cable or satellites, according to Nielsen’s latest Cross Platform report.
Still, new technologies are making it easier for people to access their daily TV diet at their convenience.
American consumers are “shifting to new technologies and devices that make it easier for them to watch the content they want whenever and wherever is most convenient for them,” indicates the report. “As such, the definition of the traditional TV home will continue to evolve.”
“TV watching, in total, appears to be rising, not falling,” reports Fortune. “Which is remarkable (and perhaps depressing, depending on your point of view) given the rise in non-television Internet use, video game playing, and other entertainment options.”
With the convergence of TV, personal computing devices and the Internet, a new media revolution is upon us. Where is it headed? CNBC interviews CEOs, producers, and Internet leaders to discuss their ideas for “Stay Tuned: The Future of TV,” which premieres Monday, May 7 at 6:00 pm PT, with a re-air at 9:00 pm PT.
According to Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and investor in Aereo: “If you’re not experimenting, or innovating, and not risking your ‘so to speak’ closed business to new business models and ways of behavior, you’ll inherit the wind.”
Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast says his company’s next-gen X1 interface “brings the best of the Internet and the navigation and the search so you can integrate easily with Facebook, with Twitter. You can create a sports app as we’ve done. It can work on a PC, on the TV or on your iPad or your tablet. So it feels very relevant, very fresh, like the Internet.”
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo comments: “We used to have the few people in your living room that you were having a shared conversation with about what you were watching, it’s now exploded beyond the bounds of the living room and it’s the world that’s having a conversation about what we’re all watching… The next evolution is to bring that conversation back into the programming so that these two things start to feed off each other. I think what we’ll see then is the conversation on Twitter starts to actually impact what’s happening during the program itself in a real-time feedback loop.”
Bob Iger, CEO of Disney suggests: “The big picture philosophy is not look at the business as one platform, and then another platform, and another. It’s to look at it first — for this company as the investment in and the creation of branded, high-quality intellectual property product.”
Robert Kyncl, VP of global content at YouTube adds: “Quality can come from anywhere. It can come from users, pros, semi-pros. We want to make sure that we have all of them, that we don’t have just one class of content creators, that we have all of them.”
With Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of the popular photo-sharing app Instagram, is a video version next on the horizon?
ReadWriteWeb profiles two such social video apps — Socialcam and Viddy.
Socialcam is an iPhone and Android app that claims to have 20 million users. Viddy is an iPhone-only app with some 16 million users. Both apps allow you to take video from your smartphone and apply filter effects, add music and upload to your favorite social network such as to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Tumblr.
“Both services are polished and nicely designed apps,” suggests the review. “But forget the filters and cheesy music, the real value will be in how many users each can get — and how active those users become. It’s too early to tell which has the upper hand on that front. Both are heading towards the user numbers that Instagram had when it sold (about 35 million).”
Will video become the next big thing on social networks?
ListenLater is a new cloud-based automation tool from streaming specialist StreamOn that helps radio stations create podcasts.
The digital archive/content management program sorts content for podcasts and pulls material that can’t be used due to copyright issues.
Basic editing tools offer stations the ability to manually customize content before posting to iTunes or websites.
“ListenLater also operates as a DVR by archiving all of a station’s output and then making much of it available as on-demand programming,” reports Radio World. “Stations can flag clips for distribution as social media. According to a release, the program provides flexible advertisement placement options and swapping for replayed programming.”
According to StreamOn President Roger Charest, broadcasters can use ListenLater to redistribute live content and expand revenue with digital advertising. “For listeners, we’re giving them the ability to replay live radio broadcasts and capture and share memorable radio content and experiences with others via social media,” he said.
One day after Microsoft announced its $300 million investment in the Nook, Barnes & Noble chief exec William Lynch unveiled plans to add NFC hardware to future versions of the e-reader.
“By adding NFC chips into the next generation of Nooks, consumers will be able to take the new Nook into any Barnes & Noble retail location and simply scan any print version of a book to bring up a synopsis as well as customer and editorial reviews,” explains Digital Trends.
“This would allow anyone that’s interested in buying the print version to immediately read feedback about the quality of the book before purchase,” adds the post.
Digital Trends notes that NFC technology is faster than QR code scanning: “Consumers with smartphones can scan a QR code or a barcode in order to bring up information about a product, but that process is more time consuming than scanning with NFC. While it’s clear that Barnes & Noble management is attempting to gain an advantage over Amazon by leveraging approximately 700 physical locations with this new concept, it’s unclear how many Nook owners will make a trip into the store instead of simply browsing titles at home through the e-reader.”
Ongo is a news curation platform that leverages a team of editors to combine automation with manual curation.
“While content curation platforms are using algorithms to recommend the news, Ongo has a different tactic in mind,” reports Digital Trends. “It uses a team of editors to handpick the latest, need-to-know news for its paid subscribers.”
The article suggests that Ongo is unique in two ways:
“First, it has built its platform based on authoritative sources of news from the New York Times and Reuters. It prides itself on a strict standard of quality for news delivered to Ongo users, while boasting partnerships with the top content providers within each genre of news.”
“Second, Ongo is run using an internal algorithm recommending a selection of 10,000 articles daily for its editors to choose from. The editors will then curate authoritative and must-know news. It’s a daunting number, but with 40 publishing partners representing just over 100 publications, 60 RSS titles curated from the Web, plus 80 more publication deals in the works, this is just the beginning.”
Ongo currently has 20,000 subscribers. Ad-free use is available for a base subscription price of $1.99/month.
LG plans to introduce two smart TV models later this month based on Google TV software. They are the first among a series of Google TVs expected from manufacturers such as Sony, Samsung and Vizio.
The 3D-capable LG sets will feature Web access and gesture-based remote controls that include a QWERTY keyboard.
“Priced at $1,699 for a 47-inch model and $2,299 for another measuring 55 vertical inches, LG’s so-called ‘G2 Series’ televisions were unveiled in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,” notes paidContent.
“Google is hoping that Korea-headquartered LG, which is the second biggest manufacturer of TVs, can help kickstart its Google TV platform, which saw one of its two initial hardware partners, Logitech abandon the technology after disappointing early sales last year,” explains the article. “LG, meanwhile, is hoping that connected TVs based on the popular Android software architecture will boost TV sales.”
The post includes a 17-minute video featuring Mario Queiroz, VP of product development for Google, at last year’s paidContent Entertainment conference.
Walmart and Disney have launched an in-store augmented-reality campaign incorporating the studio’s upcoming movie “The Avengers.”
Customers can download the Super Hero Augmented Reality app that includes social media links, and engage in an in-store scavenger hunt for images of the super heroes.
While in Walmart stores, players can point their smartphones at super hero images to unlock that hero’s powers. “Users who collect all five Super Hero powers will have a chance to defeat the bad guy and win the game,” reports Mobile Commerce Daily.
“The idea of augmented reality shopping is one that is coming, whether through a smartphone or Google glasses, it is going to happen as a way for finding the way around a store,” said Tom Nawara, vice president of emerging solutions and innovation at Acquity Group, Chicago. “So getting customers used to this type of functionality is good overall and if you can do it in a way that tied into a campaign, all the better.”
The National Association of Broadcasters has dropped its opposition to the FCC’s “white spaces” proposal. White spaces make use of unused broadcast spectrum to enable what has been described as “Wi-Fi on steroids.”
The NAB had serious concerns about white spaces causing interference with adjacent TV broadcasts. It withdrew its objections saying the FCC has addressed these concerns.
The technology has been moving forward in spite of NAB’s concerns. The FCC gave its approval in 2008 and approved a device last year for Wilmington, NC.
According to Ars Technica: “Now the remaining obstacles to widespread adoption of white spaces technology are mostly technical. Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge told us that supporters of the technology are working on building the databases needed to track which television channels are available for use at any particular time and location. He said the databases are being set up on a ‘market-by-market basis. When they hit a critical mass of markets, or can accommodate multiple markets, this technology will take off much more strongly.'”
With the NAB’s objections now ended, the technology may finally get traction to widespread use. Will white spaces become a cheap alternative to cellular networks?
According to a new report from the Digital Entertainment Group, U.S. consumers spent $1.22 billion in the first quarter of 2012 to watch video they streamed or downloaded from the Internet.
This figure represents a 74 percent increase over the same period last year. The study also found a 25 percent drop in the number of people renting DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
“That shouldn’t come as much of a shock when you factor in Blockbuster’s continuing woes and the migration of Netflix subscribers to digital streaming,” comments The Verge.
“Still, it’s not all doom and gloom in rental land, as Redbox brought in $523 million, which represents growth of 30 percent compared to 2011 and accounts for nearly half of the entire segment,” adds the post. “It would seem those studio-imposed delays haven’t had poised much of a financial burden after all.”
Retailers sold 2.4 million Blu-ray players during the quarter, while sales of Blu-ray discs increased 23 percent to $541 million.
The Q4 2011 Nielsen Cross-Platform Report is out, and according to the ratings firm television is still king, but video delivery may be shifting.
Nielsen found that the number of homes with an HDTV grew by more than 8 million in the past year to 80.2 million. Traditional television viewing (live and/or timeshifted) still accounts for more than 33 hours per week.
However, gaming consoles are becoming a “secondary gateway to TV content” — consoles can be found in 45 percent of TV homes — and 33.5 million mobile phone owners now watch video content on their phones.
Interestingly, while time-shifted content experienced an increase in viewing time, mobile phone and Internet viewing were flat year-over-year.
“There are a lot of different ways to look at Nielsen’s data, but one thing is abundantly clear — its research shows that most people still watch traditional TV, and spend a lot more time watching there than on other products,” comments The Verge. “Perhaps the cord-cutting revolution is still a ways off.”
According to IMS Research, Internet-connected television sets will represent 70 percent of all TVs shipped in 2016. CE manufacturers are forecast to earn $117 billion in revenue as a result.
The report notes that Internet-connected sets accounted for one-quarter of global TV shipments last year.
IMS also forecasts that 80 percent of TVs shipped in 2016 will feature built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and nearly 30 percent will incorporate gesture, motion or voice recognition controls.
V2M adds, “the opportunity for video service providers of all stripes is not to be underestimated. Take, for instance, the opportunity to drive upper-tier broadband sales. Higher usage of connected TVs to access, say, Netflix or VUDU, will require increased bandwidth availability. Increases in consumers opting for higher broadband tiers can aid in the quest for OTT monetization, while offsetting increased investment in broadband infrastructure.”
