Category: Software

MUMBAI: An existing US-based investing fund has expressed bullish in the shares of Den Networks, upping its stake by one per cent in the multi-system operator (MSO) for around Rs 145 million.

College Retirement Equities Fund has purchased 1.3 million shares, taking its total stake to 5.93 per cent in the Sameer Manchanda-promoted cable network.

TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund) Investment Management LLC, a financial services firm with $487 billion in assets under management, bought the shares on 11 July. Den Networks on that day opened at Rs 108.70 per share on the BSE and closed higher at Rs 112.75. The open market transaction, the price of which is undisclosed, would have been somewhere in between.

With 5.93 per cent stake, TIAA-CERF is the largest non-promoter shareholder of the company. Other shareholders in Den include StanChart IL and FS Asia Infrastructure G (4.98%) and Network 18 Media And Investments Limited (3.08%) among others. The firm is a leader in helping those in the academic, medical, cultural, governmental and research fields plan for retirement.

Den‘s stock climbed 7.29 per cent to close Friday at Rs 122.10 on the BSE.

“The purchase of Den‘s shares by an existing investor has been the main reason behind the stock going up. It remains to be seen whether this rally will sustain. The scrip price should logically go up just before digitisation in the four metros. There is still an element of uncertainty on whether the digitisation deadline sticks this time around, though the government has sent firm signals to the industry that there would be no further extension,” a media analyst at a broking firm said.

Besides cable TV distribution, Den is part of a joint venture company called Media Pro Enterprise India that distributes Star, Zee and Turner channels in India.

MUMBAI: Smartphone penetration continued to grow during the second quarter of the year, with 54.9 per cent of US mobile subscribers owning smartphones as of 20 June.

This growth is driven by increasing smartphone purchases with two out of three Americans who acquired a new mobile phone in the last three months chose a smartphone instead of a feature phone.

Android continues to lead the smartphone market in the US, with a majority of smartphone owners (51.8 per cent) using an Android OS handset. Over a third (34.3 per cent) of smartphone owners use an Apple iPhone, and Blackberry owners represented another 8.1 per cent of the smartphone market.

Overall among smartphone owners, Apple had the highest manufacturer share of smartphone handsets. Among recent acquirers who obtained their smartphone during June 2012, 54 per cent said they chose an Android handset and 36 per cent bought an iPhone.

MUMBAI: Youku, China’s leading Internet television company, has entered into a multiple-year agreement with NBCUniversal International Television Distribution for the video-on-demand rights in China to a broad collection of current, library and upcoming NBCUniversal feature films.

The new agreement covers upcoming NBCUniversal release in addition to a yearly rotating selection of more than 100 classic titles from NBCUniversal’s catalogue.

These will include Contraband, Safe House, The Lorax, and summer tentpole releases Battleship and Snow White & The Huntsman. The new films will appear on Youku’s platform for paid on-demand viewing after their China theatrical releases.

The films — including Schindler’s List, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III and Apollo 13 — will be available for on-demand viewing through Youku Premium.

“Youku has been steadily broadening and deepening our partnerships with Chinese and international studios. Our new agreement with NBCUniversal is one more step forward towards our goal of offering the highest quality content to Youku’s more than 300 million viewers. The new agreement best demonstrates the confidence that we and our partners share in the growth of Youku Premium,” said Youku’s vice president of movie operations and corporate development Huilong Zhu.

Youku already had licensing with major studios including Disney, Paramount, Dreamworks, Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox.

NEW DELHI: Twitter has been integrated into MediaTek’s mobile platform solutions, enabling users in emerging markets to access a rich Twitter experience via affordable mobile devices, more easily than ever before.

With this partnership, MediaTek will preload the Twitter application in its MRE middleware as the default feature in its reference design for mobile handsets. Mobile manufacturers and brands can expect to reduce the time-to-market and to develop product differentiation for their consumers.

With MRE, smart-feature phones will be able to run Twitter on minimal memory and hardware requirements, allowing manufacturers and brands to offer price-friendly devices with value-added mobile internet services. People with smart-feature phones will be able to experience a rich native application experience of Twitter consistent with smartphone applications like Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android.

Mobile internet usage continues to grow every year, more so in emerging markets. According to a recent study by media research firm Informa Telecoms and Media, emerging markets will account for 60 per cent of the mobile market by 2013. With 70 per cent of mobile handsets sold in emerging markets being feature phones, innovative products such as the MRE solution helps MediaTek to address the growing demand for mobile internet access. This global partnership underscores the significant potential to present users worldwide with a gateway to access Twitter.

MRE is MediaTek’s innovative middleware technology designed for mobile developers and application providers to deploy services and content for ‘Smart-Feature phones’. The MRE solution provides millions of users in emerging markets with the ability to enjoy rich online experiences previously available only on smartphones. MRE-enabled devices will enable many users to access leading Internet services, such as Twitter, in an intuitive way.

“Our new partnership with Twitter further reinforces MediaTek’s focus on providing differentiated services and value for handset brands, giving them the means to offer affordable, compelling and differentiated mobile solutions to consumers in key emerging markets ,” said Cheng-Te Chuang, Corporate Vice President of MediaTek.

Jana Messerschmidt, Vice President of Business Development at Twitter, said, “The mobile Internet presents a great opportunity for Twitter to reach every person on the planet. Our partnership with MediaTek will help people in emerging markets enjoy the same rich Twitter experience on their mobile devices as more than 140 million others around the world.”

The latest smart-feature phone solution, the MediaTek MT6255, will be the first model to carry Twitter applications. In the near future, Twitter service preload will be also be expanded to all MediaTek mobile platforms.

MUMBAI:The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA) has announced that several of its members in the US have seen increased adoption and commercialisation of their digital watermarking technology and solutions in the first half of 2012.

Members of the DWA continue to innovate with digital watermarking to help create new digital entertainment experiences for consumers around the globe and a more secured, manageable and viable media ecosystem for rights holders.

Digital watermarking is the process by which identifying data is woven into media content, giving it a unique, digital identity.

Every day billions of people read magazines, listen to music, watch television, purchase movies on demand and use portable devices. The use of digital watermarking technology is making these entertainment experiences more secure, interactive and fulfilling than ever before.

GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies president Bill Rosenblatt said, “It is exciting to see digital watermarking technology blossom over the last few years into such a wide variety of applications. It is now used routinely as a complement to encryption for protecting high-value content. But it’s also used in various ways to enrich content’s value, both to users and to content distributors.”

Second-Screen Entertainment

The media industry in the US is experiencing a period of change with a clear shift in consumer viewing habits. A recent report from Nielsen found that 88 per cent of people who own tablets and 86 per cent of those with smartphones in the US have used their devices at least once while watching television in the month of May 2012.

Civolution through its SyncNow Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), brings second-screen experiences to a whole new level. Using audio digital watermarking the SyncNow – 2nd screen solution enables identification and synchronisation between (live) broadcast, on-demand or recorded television content. It allows for exciting interactive applications on companion devices (tablets, smart phones, laptops) to present compelling synchronised user experiences such as polling, voting, targeted advertising, direct purchases, etc., and has been deployed to sync apps to several international show formats.

Digital Watermarks & VoD:
According to recent data from Infonetics, the global video infrastructure market grew by six per cent in 2011 to $803 million Additional research from the NPD Group shows that the current video-on-demand (VOD) market is ruled by Pay-TV services with revenues reaching $1.3 billion in 2011; in fact, 15 per cent of US consumers ages 13 and older used pay-TV VOD movie services from a cable, satellite, or fiber-optic provider in the 12 months ending August 2011, which translates to 40 million users.

As mandated by Hollywood studios for offering movies in an early-release window, operators need to integrate transactional digital watermarking protection into their VOD workflow and network infrastructure, which allows for forensic tracking to the source of potentially illegal copies. Contributors to growth in this market are Verimatrix and Civolution.

Verimatrix’s StreamMark server-side forensic watermarking solution has been fully integrated with VoD server equipment from leading vendors ready for commercial real-time stream by stream payload insertion.

The end-to-end StreamMark solution has been deployed with US cable operators for early-release VoD trials, which are part of a trend that will open up new revenue opportunities and provide key service differentiation in the market. StreamMark can be deployed as a standalone component to an existing cable network infrastructure or as an integrated part of a complete Verimatrix revenue security solution.

SeaChange and Civolution recently announced they have created a joint solution that, for the first time, enables cable operators to offer premium VOD content to their subscribers. In order to do this, SeaChange integrated Civolution’s newest NexGuard watermark preprocessor and smart-embedder software into its intelligent video software platform. The solution has been deployed by a large North American cable operator.

MUMBAI: Big Shoe Bazaar India, the brand owner of e-commerce portal Yebhi.com, has raised Rs 1 billion in Series C round of funding led by Fidelity Growth Partners India and Qualcomm Incorporated through its venture capital investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures. Existing investors, Nexus Venture Partners and Catamaran also participated.

The wholesale cash and carry venture supplies shoes, apparels, lifestyle accessories, jewellery, mobiles, electronics, kitchenware and homeware across a variety of brands from wholesalers to smaller retailers through an online catalogue.

Fidelity Growth Partners India MD Raul Rai said, “Big Shoe Bazaar is best positioned and equipped to support the needs of mass market ecommerce sites like Yebhi.com. Global leaders in the mass market segment were able to take up value-based positions based on very strong back end capabilities. We believe Big Shoe Bazaar‘s strengths are unparalleled in the backend.”

Qualcomm Ventures senior director- India and Israel Karthee Madasamy added, “The number of internet users via mobile has already surpassed Internet users via PC, creating a growing opportunity to reach mobile connected consumers with unique shopping experiences. Our investment in Big Shoe Bazaar has come at a time when the rapid rise of smartphones, tablets and social media networks stands to greatly influence the way people engage in online shopping. We are delighted to co-lead this financing round.”

“Yebhi.com has pioneered mass market ecommerce in India and has taken significant first mover advantage in this large segment. Big Shoe Bazaar‘s state of the art fulfillment centre, efficiencies in our supply chain and our logistics network are key to supporting Yebhi.com‘s customer connect. Our Series C round of investments will further strengthen these core initiatives,” Big Shoe Bazaar India CEO Manmohan Agarwal said.

MUMBAI: Vuclip has launched India‘s first mobile video portal dedicated to women‘s needs – Mira! The content on the portal includes topics like health, beauty, parenting, cookery, career and entertainment.

The portal is targeted towards the new age women who are independent, tech savvy and full of life. It derives content from almost 30 content providers in India and globally and the video channel can be accessed from virtually any internet-enabled mobile phone.

According to a global survey carried out by Vuclip which saw participation by almost 40,000 women from 176 countries including nearly 13,000 women from India besides voice and text, 60 per cent of Indian women respondents use their handsets as a primary source of entertainment. It furthered revealed that nearly 80 per cent of the respondents said that there was a steady increase in their time spent on mobile-viewing.

Women‘s areas of interest, according to the survey, include watching TV soaps, cute/funny videos, sports, home and lifestyle, news, celeb gossip and amazing/whacky videos on their mobile apart from movies and music.

Thirty seven per cent women from India reported that they spend more than one hour daily on TV, print or radio while close 32 per cent women reported that they spend over an hour to access mobile content every day.

The five day long study consisted of 65 per cent women aged 18-35 years among the Indian respondents, while 24 per cent were under 18 years and another 11 per cent were over 36 years.

Vuclip India vice president advertising Meera Chopra said, “Even as the adoption of mobile among women grows in India, it is encouraging to note that mobile is already becoming a woman‘s preferred source for content. Currently, women constitute only 14 per cent of the total 11 million users on Vuclip in India. We hope that by the end of this year, Mira! will help Vuclip double its existing 1.54 million women users in India.”

Vuclip global vice president for marketing Judith Coley, said, “In contrast to the developed countries, internet in the developing world is arriving on phones before even traditional computers. About 59 per cent of internet users in India get online only via mobile phones. We hope that Mira! will help spark a revolution in the way women‘s mobile content is perceived – by content providers, brands, and women themselves. Cisco predicts that mobile video will increase 25-fold to account for over 70 percent of total mobile data traffic between 2011 and 2016. As the world‘s leading independent mobile video destination, Vuclip is uniquely positioned to help usher in mobile adoption among women through enriching mobile content. Vuclip thinks women are wonderful and is honored to be able to bring them the best of web video for their entertainment snack.”

MUMBAI: Star TV UK, a subsidiary of Star India, has launched Star Plus HD on the Sky DTH platform, making it the first Asian HD channel to broadcast in the UK.

Star Plus HD is a simulcast version of the Star Plus SD feed.

Star TV EVP of International Business Rajan Singh, “The pace of innovation at Star UK has been phenomenal and with the Star Plus HD launch in the UK, we are able to delight our viewers and advertisers alike with an unmatched and exciting viewing experience.”

Star‘s other channels in the UK market include Star Gold, Life OK and ABP News.

The Star channels are on Sky platform. Star Plus and ABP News are also on Virgin Media.

MUMBAI: ECS European Communication Services and OH TV have joined forces to offer the African broadcast market joint solutions providing broadcast and IPTV access to the African continent and around the world.

Together the companies are providing both a turn-key satellite broadcast service across Africa and an IPTV service via OH BoX‘s IPTV Platform for the UK, European and international markets.

Taking advantage of emerging technology opportunities in both regular broadcast and new media IPTV, ECS and OH TV are supplying a two for one service.

Africa-based broadcasters and Africa-centric content channel operators seeking to increase their audience size can utilise a strategically located satellite over Africa, full downlink facilities in the UK and complete access to OH BoX’s IPTV platform to extend their distribution over all of Africa and add their content to OH BoX‘s IPTV service reaching Europe and across the globe.

“Our advanced service offers local and regional broadcasters in Africa a new opportunity for covering all Africa and growing internationally. We can bring them to various cable head ends around the continent, UK, Europe and US. Working closely with OHBoX‘s IPTV Platform, the channels will be available on laptops, tablets, smartphones and computers around the world,” stated ECS CEO Eran Avni.

“The keys to our turn-key solution are the top edge technologies we use to compress and distribute content that enable our partnership to bring excellent pricing to the market. This is the ECS edge.”

OHTV CEO Akin Salami commented, “The promise of Africa is here. OH TV‘s cooperation with ECS is a step forward to bringing the continent‘s culture and entertainment to the international Black Diaspora. This partnership will offer broadcasters the most cost effective way of creating a global TV channel. All channels on OH Box‘s IPTV platform are ‘App ready’ giving them a competitive edge when compared to other international channels.”

MUMBAI: American new broadcaster CNN has teamed up with social networking platform Facebook for the 2012 US Presidential to offer an interactive and uniquely social experience for CNN’s on-air, mobile and online audiences and Facebook’s millions of users.

In this partnership, Facebook and CNN are teaming up to take the pulse of the American electorate and amplify the voices of the social site’s users as they share their thoughts and feelings on candidates and critical issues facing the country ahead of Election Day on 6 November this year.

This innovative multi-platform partnership will include “I‘m Voting” Facebook App an interactive application which will enable people who use Facebook to commit to voting and endorse specific candidates and issues. Commitments to vote will be displayed on people’s Facebook timeline, news feed, and real-time ticker.

The app which will be available in English and Spanish, will enable people to share their commitment to vote and support of particular issues or candidates with friends and will provide a way to see how many of their own friends they’ve enlisted to support those issues or candidates. These commitments will be visually displayed by U.S. state on an interactive map.

The app will serve as a “second screen” for CNN‘s America’s Choice 2012 political coverage. Via on-air, online and mobile segments, CNN personalities will use the app to ask Facebook users the most important questions driving the national dialogue and report on their answers.

“We fundamentally changed the way people consume live event coverage online, setting a record for the most-watched live video event in Internet history, when we teamed up with Facebook for the 2009 Inauguration of President Obama,” said CNN Digital SVP KC Estenson.

Facebook and CNN will measure metrics about President Obama, Vice President Biden, Mitt Romney, and the Republican vice presidential candidate as soon as the running mate has been named. As the campaigns progress, Facebook will report the aggregate amount of discussions surrounding each candidate and CNN will drill down on specific state-by-state analysis.

The two will also survey voting-age users in key U.S. locations and demographics around the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Presidential Debates, Election Day and other significant dates on the political calendar.

CNN’s editorial department will work with Facebook’s research team to write the questions and publish the results on CNN, CNN.com, and on the US Politics on Facebook page, Facebook’s hub for campaign 2012 information.

“Each campaign cycle brings new technologies that enhance the way that important connections between citizens and their elected representatives are made. Though the mediums have changed, the critical linkages between candidates and voters­ remain,” said Facebook Vice President-U.S. Public Policy Joel Kaplan.