Amazon prepares to launch Android app store

Amazon is expected to launch a mobile app store soon, in an attempt to compete, head-on, with Google's Android Marketplace. A number of Amazon's developers have already submitted some apps to its Appstore Development Portal.

Amazon has also created a Developer Blog and a Twitter account, to promote this launch. Amazon has even have made video postings on YouTube, explaining how to submit apps to its online store.

Rumors indicate that consumers will be able to buy Android apps, from Amazon, on computers, as well as, smart phones and tablets, running Google's Android OS. For Amazon account holders, app purchases will be made using the same account they currently use to make online purchases. To read the full article, please click here.

Busy news week - Netflix, TiVo, ivi TV, Amazon and LOVEFiLM, Opera Software, Woomi, DivX TV

After a slighly lull following CES, earnings announcements and a full bevy of newsworthy announcements in the digital media and consumer electronics spaces have my e-mail inbox bursting. Here are a few items worthy of noting:

Netflix Subscribers Surge Past 20 Million
The guidance provided by Netflix's executives in Q3 2010 was subscriber gains of 2.7 million, and total subscribers between 19 and 19.7 million subscribers. In actuality, the company gained 3.08 million subscribers to end 2010 with 20.01 million (that's an increase of 63% from year-end 2009). Netflix's Watch Instantly service is now supported on more than 200 devices. Here's an interesting tidbit of trivia: Netflix says that the Apple TV is now generating more hours of viewing than the iPad.

ivi TV on the Ropes?
I've written about ivi.tv previously (here and here). The company's model is to take broadcast content from the Seattle, New York , Chicago, and Los Angeles and rebroadcast it online to subscribers who pay $4.99 a month. ivi TV officials believe that U.S. copyright law provides them with the right to rebroadcast the content as a de facto cable operator, but major broadcasters disagree. As they did with a service called FilmOn, the broadcasters are seeking an "enjoin" order, which would is basically a cease-and-desist order. In a court ruling last week, the broadcasters gained a victory.

Jim O'Neill at FierceIPTV summed up the court ruling from last week the best with this article:

A federal judge in Seattle late last week rejected a request from ivi TV for a declaratory ruling legitimizing its claims that it wasn't infringing on broadcasters' copyrights. District Court Judge James Robart wrote: "The totality of the circumstances here leads the court to conclude that ivi filed the action here because of imminent threat of suit by the Defendants, and to secure its own forum."

A bevy of broadcasters have sued ivi in New York seeking to stop it from broadcasting their signals. The Seattle ruling means that case can now move forward.

FilmOn does live on, at least in a role as distributor for independent or niche content. In fact, the company issued a press release today where it announced that it signed content agreements with Retro Television Network (RTV), The Ski Channel, The Documentary Channel, and Tuff TV.

Amazon Buys Full Control of LOVEFiLM
Unlike in the U.S., where Netflix dominates streaming video for TV shows and movies (our recently-completed study Digital Video: Three Screens and Beyond reveals that 22% of U.S. broadband households using Netflix's Watch Instantly feature), there is no pan-European equivalent. There are certainly some services to watch closely as their catalogues increase and their availability grows - among them are Acetrax, Qriocity (Sony), and Video Futur. LOVEFiLM is among the larger video distributors in Europe today, as it replicates the online DVD/Blu-ray Disc rental business of Netflix in the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It also has about 4,500 films and TV shows available online. This compares to 20,000 titles available for Netflix subscribers.

Amazon looks like it will take its vast distribution network - and digital video services - to Europe with its full acquisition of LOVEFiLM, announced last week. LOVEFiLM currently has 1.6 million subscribers.

Charter and TiVo Link Up
TiVo's future success is dependent upon lowering its dependency on the retail-based set-top box market and strengthening its relationship with operators and consumer electronics manufacturers that can license TiVo's software and user interface technology or use its hybrid set-top boxes (such as the TiVo Premeire). On January 18, TiVo reinforced its operator strategy by discussing its recent operator wins, including hybrid set-top box deployments with RCN and Suddenlink in the U.S. It notes that it expects similar agreements with Cox Communications and DirecTV in the future. TiVo's TiVo's software is currently ported to the set-top boxes of such European operators as ONO (Spain), Virgin Media (U.K.), and Canal Digital (Norway and Sweden).

On January 25, TiVo announced its latest operator partnership with Charter Communications. The cable operator will utilize TiVo's latest generation high definition user interface and TiVo Premiere set top box, as well as upcoming multi-room and non-DVR platforms. Beyond the initial phase, the strategy will encompass next generation platforms that will expand the service with new devices, features, and third-party applications. TiVo's discovery, search, navigation and recommendation features will bring Charter customers multiple forms of entertainment content, including linear TV, video on demand, online video, and IP applications.

Opera Software Gets Connected with Samsung and Broadcom
As I left CES, one takeaway is that - in the fourth generation of connected TV products - the market is still wide open for a host of technology developers to play a significant role. Whether it's system-on-chip companies, apps developers, user interface designers, content delivery and management specialists, aggregators, Web-on-TV technology providers, and advertising specialists, there is certainly no shortage of opportunity for this market.

Opera Software made two significant announcements in the past week - one with Sony and today with Broadcom. For Sony, the Opera Devices SDK provides the company's browser and other tools to bring Internet applications to Sony BRAVIA connected TVs and Blu-ray Disc players. In the Broadcom announcement, the Opera Devices DSK 2.9 will have out-of-the-box support on Broadcom's BCM7420 set-top-box SoC platform.

Woomi from Miniweb Interactive
Miniweb Interactive's history is in developing interactive features and user interfaces for television services. At CES, it unveiled Woomi, a connected TV services platform. It announced an early partnership with Turkish manufacturer Vestel.

Miniweb predicts that Woomi be available on over half of the world’s connected TVs by mid 2011. Going live across all Samsung smart TVs and Blu-ray players in the UK this month, woomi will then roll out to multiple European territories and the U.S. within the next three months. Woomi will also be distributed by Echostar Europe where it will be the main user interface for video discovery on a new, soon to be launched, set-top box. Also recentlynnounced are global distribution deals with Vestel, a Turkish white-label TV manufacturer, and with Chinese STB manufacturer, DTM.

DivX TV
At CES, DivX (Sonic Solutions, and now Rovi) announced new content and hardware support for DivX TV, its connected TV content platform, including Broadcom, Marvell, and Renesas.

Apple Removes WikiLeaks Program From App Store.

Apple Inc., a California-based consumer electronics giant said it had removed a program from its popular App Store that allowed users to view information from the WikiLeaks website, as well as its Twitter feed, using Apple’s iPhone and iPad mobile devices.

WikiLeaks recently published a raft of U.S. diplomatic cables, prompting the ire of U.S. government. Apple isn’t alone in cutting off access to WikiLeaks or halting business transactions with the group behind the website. Amazon.com Inc. shut down WikiLeaks’ account on its Web servers, while eBay Inc. unit PayPal, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are preventing people from using their services to donate money to the group.

Apple, which voids the warranty of its products if unauthorized apps are loaded onto them, has a history of “disappearing” apps. Earlier this year, the company began removing adult-themed apps, even though it had already approved them for sale. It also approved – and then removed – a game called “Baby Shaker” that generated a raft of bad publicity for the company.

For the complete article, please click here.

Using 'Likes' for Gift Ideas

Companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Etsy Inc., a site that sells handmade and vintage goods, are making gift recommendations for individuals by tapping into the trove of comments and preferences collected by social-networking giant Facebook Inc.

The social-shopping efforts are all in an experimental phase, but the goal is to change how consumers discover and choose products—and increasing their likelihood to click on the buy button.
The latest retail efforts focus on using Facebook's platform—where outside sites can tap into Facebook user information with their permission. Since last holiday season, more than half of the top 25 retail sites have integrated with Facebook's platform, the company says.

eBay Inc. launched "Group Gifts," which allows users to split the cost of a present with their Facebook friends by logging into eBay with their Facebook credentials.

For Facebook, the goal is to expand its reach on the Web and make its networks more useful. Facebook says it gives retailers some ground rules about how they can use its data—no spamming, for instance.

For the complete article, please click here.

Amazon’s Kindle hits Millions already this quarter

Electronic retailing giant Amazon.com has never revealed how many units of its Kindle ereaders it has sold, always offering vague glowing statements that the Kindle is the company’s “most gifted” item and that Kindles continue to set sales records. However, without knowing how many Kindles the company selling, all those statements are almost meaningless: after all, if you sell three devices on quarter, selling four devices the next quarter is a 33 percent increase in sales!

Amazon dropped a hint about how many Kindles it is selling: the retailer claims to have sold “millions” of Kindles in the first 73 days of the holiday quarter, and furthermore that holiday quarter sales to date surpass the total of all Kindle sales for 2009. It’s still not a specific number, but it means that Amazon has sold at least two million Kindles so far this quarter—and that number is only going to go up as the end-of-year holidays loom closer.

Third-party estimates of Kindle sales for 2010 have generally hovered around the 4 million unit mark, although Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney recently increased his estimate of 2010 Kindle sales to 5 million, and forecast Amazon will move 8.4 million Kindles in 2011.

For the complete article, please click here.

TV Bargains Come Early This Year

Retailers and manufacturers are slashing flat-screen television prices more aggressively than usual this holiday season in hopes of avoiding a pileup of inventory. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. and Amazon.com Inc. are touting deals ahead of Black Friday to clear out older and cheaper sets before an anticipated flood of deeper price cuts in coming weeks.

The frenzy is being fueled by such top makers as Sony Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co., which are reducing suggested retail prices and sweetening their promotions with such extras as free Blu-ray movie players and 3-D glasses after initially overestimating the American consumer's appetite for pricey features.

Cutthroat television discounting has been a holiday rite in recent years as major retailers wrestle for a larger share of a big-ticket sales category. But analysts say this season could be different because more than half of all households in the country have at least one flat-screen TV, and newer gadgets such as Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet computer are enticing consumers.

For the complete article, please click here.

Best Buy Offers Free Google TV Setup Through Holidays

Hoping to make Google's TV-wrapped-in-the-Web technology less intimidating, Best Buy is offering free installation and setup through the holiday-shopping season to customers who purchase a Sony Internet TV or Blu-ray player powered by Google TV.

Google TV's proposition is to combine conventional TV with Web content, YouTube clips and other video, games and applications into "a single, seamless entertainment experience." The Internet search giant is working with media companies to let their content be access via Google TV -- including Turner Broadcasting System, HBO, CNBC, Netflix, Amazon.com and the National Basketball Association -- and also is in talks with broadcasters about enabling their content on the platform as well.

For the complete article, please click here.

Sezmi is now available at Amazon

Sezmi announced that its television service is available to viewers in 36 markets across the U.S. through Amazon. Amazon is the second major retailer to offer Sezmi's TV service, after Best Buy.

The Sezmi personalized television system costs $149.99 and includes a one-terabyte HD Media Recorder that automatically organizes live, recorded, on-demand and online content, along with the industry-leading indoor television reception system for receiving local HD broadcast channels and cable channels. The monthly subscription service comes in two tiers, the first of which is Sezmi Select for $4.99 per month. Sezmi Select customers receive HD DVR capabilities, live local broadcast channels, an ever-growing on-demand store that features thousands of free and pay-as-you-go movies and shows, and access to rich Internet content such as YouTube™ and video podcasts, along with the personalized user interfaces for each member of the household. The second tier, Sezmi Select Plus, is priced at $19.99 per month and includes everything in the Select package, with the addition of a tremendous content lineup of live and on-demand cable channels from the most watched cable networks.

Time Warner Cable-Disney Dispute, Apple's Reported $0.99 TV Rentals, Amazon's Subscription Service, and Sony's Efforts

I wonder if September 1, 2010, will be looked upon as the day in which we witnessed the beginning of the end for traditional pay-TV services. There is an interesting intersection of news today spanning the world of cable TV and Internet TV services, including Apple, Amazon, and Sony. The items:

• Time Warner Cable and Disney are expected to officially announce a new retransmission agreement, preventing Disney programming (including ESPN) from going dark after today. Good thing - you'd have a ton of ticked-off customers wanting ESPN's colllege football coverage starting on Thursday night. Our hometown paper - The Dallas Morning News has a good piece on what the contentious negotiations might mean for consumers. My take is to expect higher cable bills. In recent days, we've been asked a number of times about the pain threshold for consumers as they consider what they're paying for a triple-play service. Our analysis shows that consumers are still finding high value in their pay-TV services, and efforts by operators to increase their video-on-demand and high-definition offerings certainly help. In this recessionary period, we have found that - as consumers moved more entertainment into the home - that cable TV service has been viewed as a lower-cost alternative to paying high movie ticket prices and the babysitter expenses. It will be interesting to see, however, if we start to reach a pain point for consumers in what they're paying each month.
• Apple is expected to announce something today, and the speculation is rampant about new iPod models, a cloud-based iTunes service, an Apple TV remake, and the possibility of the availability of $0.99 TV show rentals.
• Amazon is reported to be launching a subscription video service that could potentially challenge Netflix in streaming older movie titles.
• Sony has launched Qriocity, a cloud-based movie and music service that feeds content into Sony's connected devices - TVs, Blu-ray players, and home theater systems
  
  
  
  
  

Television Enthusiasts Can Get Their TV Fix as FLO TV Personal Television Mobile Device Debuts with Major Retailers

Consumers eager to watch their favorite television programs, sports and news while on-the-go can satisfy their mobile TV craving as the handheld FLO TV Personal Television hits shelves across the nation today. The much-anticipated device from FLO TV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, delivers live and time-shifted content via the award-winning FLO TV mobile TV service and will be available at Amazon.com, Best Buy, and RadioShack.

As part of the launch and for a limited time, FLO TV also announced that the first six months of subscription service will be bundled into the overall retail price of $249.99, after which point a monthly service subscription fee will be charged. FLO TV Personal Television is the first portable digital television to offer all these features in one package: dedicated portable television, live mobile TV from America’s best content providers, a dedicated, nationally available mobile television network, a capacitive touch-screen, long battery life, and an easy to share experience. The FLO TV service programming line-up may differ depending on distribution platform.

For more information, click here.

Jeff Bezos a Gamer at Heart?

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, apparently is a gamer at heart. I'm not sure which gamer segment he belongs to. Maybe dormant gamers?

Over the past several years, Jeff has invested in Second Life (a 3D virtual world company) and Kongregate (Youtube of games), and two days ago Amazon bought Reflexive for an undisclosed amount. Reflexive is a casual game developer, portal, and digital distribution platform. It is relatively unknown compared to some of the bigger casual game companies like Real Networks, Big Fish, Popcap, Wild Tangent, and Oberon Media. Amazon has been actively diversifying its business, recently introducing digital stores for music, videos, and books. Games are a natural extension of that strategy. Just another thing to sell through its massive server clouds and customer list, right? Don't be surprised if you see a list of recommended casual games like card and puzzle games when you purchase a box of diapers from Amazon. If you are a Kindle owner, now you can take a quick break between books!

The casual gaming industry has grown up to be a billion dollar business in the last couple of years. The space is becoming extremely crowded. Many large companies, including the ones mentioned earlier, have become vertically integrated. Big Fish and Oberon recently got a big pile of cash to further grow their business. Big Fish got $83 million and Oberon $20 million. In the meantime, large portals such as Yahoo, MSN, and AOL still maintain a presence in the space. The industry is also at a time of change. Many companies are trying out new business models, including ad-supported, session-based, and subscription-based models, instead of relying on the download to own model, which is likely Amazon's starting point. It will be interesting to see how Amazon's gaming strategy plays out. Keeping the Reflexive team intact will be a good first step.