Category: Software

MUMBAI: Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Company announced a combined investment of $300 million in the social networking site Twitter. The stake is about three per cent of the company.

He said, “Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact. Social media will fundamentally change the media industry landscape in the coming years. Twitter will capture and monetise this positive trend.”

Twitter allows users to post messages – tweets – of up to 140 characters.

MUMBAI: The digital entertainment company Hungama.com is offering exclusive content related to Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, ahead of the release of his movie Don 2. The SRK special is called Super Khan – Shah Rukh Unlimited.

Hungama.com provides access to exclusive SRK songs, videos, wallpapers, ringtones and movies. Furthermore, SRK games like Don 2 – Prison Break and Don 2 – The Chase are available on mobile.

Also available on are games from his movies like Om Shanti Om, Billu and My Name Is Khan. Hungama.com also has the hits and flicks of SRK along with pictures, wallpapers and games.

Hungama.com will also gives consumers a chance to re-visit the actor‘s yesteryears by giving them access to his songs from movies like Dil Toh Pagal Hai, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Veer Zaara and Swades.

The Super Khan Special has the same pricing models as the rest of Hungama.com- Rs 10 for single downloads, Rs 20 for the value pack of four downloads, Rs 99 for the super value pack for 99 downloads on 30 days and the monthly subscription of Rs 99 for unlimited downloads.

MUMBAI: Asiasat and Thaicom have announced the signing of a cooperation agreement to provide satellite services from the orbital location of 120 degrees East.

Under the agreement, the two companies will place an interim satellite at the 120 degrees East orbital slot, while a new satellite contracted with Space Systems/Loral will be launched in early 2014. Asiasat and Thaicom will provide services on their portions of the new satellite under the name AsiaSat 6 and Thaicom 7 respectively.

This cooperation will preserve the 120 degrees East orbital slot for Thailand and will provide additional broadcast, telecommunications and broadband services across the Asia-Pacific region.

Asiasat president, CEO William Wade said, “Our strategic cooperation with Thaicom allows Asiasat to expand our inventory and to meet growing demand from the region.”

Thaicom CEO Suphajee Suthumpun said, “We are pleased to establish this new partnership with AsiaSat to cooperate on a satellite project that will preserve the orbital slot for Thailand at 120 degrees East, and fulfill the fast growing demand for quality satellite capacity from customers in our country and across the region.”

Asiasat 6/Thaicom 7 will have 28 high-power C-band transponders serving Asia and Australia.

MUMBAI: Apple has emerged as the leading player in the rapidly growing connected TV player market, according to the latest research from the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service.

According to the report, ‘Connected TV Players: Another Battlefield in the Smart TV War‘ global sales of connected TV players-also known as video streaming or internet TV set-top-boxes-will more than double in 2011, compared to 2010. Strategy Analytics projects that the market will reach almost 12 million units globally this year, with Apple alone predicted to sell nearly four million devices.

While connected TV players have not gained mainstream traction, an increasing number of consumers are buying them, as they offer one of the easiest ways to get Internet content onto the big TV screen. The lower price points of the second generation Apple TV and Roku Box have made them more affordable and compelling to consumers. More than eight per cent of US households now own a connected TV player, compared to seven per cent of European households.

This report also found that Apple TV users are spending more money on movies and TV shows: 30 per cent of Apple TV owners rented movies or TV shows, compared to 20 percent of users of other devices.

Apple is leading this nascent market, which it still considers a hobby. As Apple prepares for its expected launch of smart TVs in 2012, rival platforms must accelerate their development plans to keep Apple from running away with the connected TV business, as it has done in smartphones and digital music.

NEW DELHI: In a major step forward, the Government today received Parliamentary sanction for its digitisation programme with the Rajya Sabha passing the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Second Amendment Bill which has already been approved by the Lok Sabha.

The Bill, which seeks to replace an Ordinance promulgated in October, will now go to the President for her assent before it is notified as an Act.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said in her reply to the brief discussion that the consumer will be the main beneficiary of digitisation. She said that the consumer will now be free to choose the channels he/she wanted instead of being forced to accept the bouquets offered by the direct-to-home operators or multi-system operators. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has been authorised under the Bill to fix the tariff for a-la-carte basis.

Referring to apprehensions that cable operators would be ‘put out of business‘, she said that there were bound to be some teething troubles but the cable operators would gain in the long run. She said that the Bill will also give an impetus to the Headend-in-the-Sky programme (HITS) which will help cable operators. Capacity building programmes would be held to apprise them with new technologies.

Soni said that an enabling provision had put in place to the effect that only Rs 200,000 to Rs 300,000 would be needed by cable operators to move to digitisation.

She said around 65 per cent of the broadcasting industries all over the world relied on subscriptions rather than advertising while Indian broadcasters relied on advertising and hence did everything to get TRPs. Digitisation would give a true assessment of the subscriber base of the broadcasters and reduce dependence on advertisements. In turn, this may also lead to reduction in the vulgar content on television channels as there would be lesser dependence on TRPs.

Apart from improving the quality of reception, digitisation would also empower the cable operators to give larger number of channels to the consumers. There will be no prime band after digitisation, she said.

She said the Bill would plug revenue leakage and enable regulatory agencies to check illegal content.

The Bill has punitive clauses against cable operators, MSOs or DTH operators who failed to show the must-carry channels, including the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV channels.

While most members supported the Bill, they expressed apprehensions about the closing down of cable TV operations, and cautioned the government against exploitation of the common viewer in the form of unjustifiable hikes in the cable rates and vulgar and misleading advertisements.

The Bill aims to digitise the cable sector in the country by 31 December 2014. The Government had earlier announced a timetable for complete digitisation of cable television in the four metros by 31 March, 2012, but this was put off to June 2012 in a notification issued subsequently. The target date for completely digitising cable sector in cities with population of more than one million was 30 March 2013, all urban areas by 30 September 2014, and the whole country by 31 December 2014.

MUMBAI: First Class and Business Class passengers on board select American Airlines flights will be entertained by the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

This is the first time that entertainment will be provided by Samsung tablets in the American Airlines flight. The service will be available in the American‘s First and Business Class cabins on select flights operated by B767-200, B767-300 and domestic B757 aircraft which connect beyond American‘s daily nonstop New Delhi-Chicago flight.

American Airlines VP marketing Rob Friedman said, “We continue to move forward with our efforts to modernise the travel experience by using the innovative Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to provide in-flight entertainment onboard.”

Customers will be able to choose from a library of 70 films, including 30 new releases, with three titles exclusive to American from Paramount, television series and audio tracks.

Samsung Mobile VP and GM enterprise sales said, “With its Android platform, ultra-slim, lightweight design, a brilliant 10-inch touchscreen and an array of entertainment options, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will provide a world-class entertainment experience for travellers onboard American Airlines.”

NEW DELHI: The Government has set aside Rs 9.34 billion for All India Radio and Rs 6.2 billion for Doordarshan for digitisation all over the country in the 11th Plan allocation.

Schemes of Rs 9.08 billion have already been sanctioned out of the total amount for All India Radio and are under implementation. AIR is already digitising with the adoption of the DRM standard.

Digitisation of AIR would help provide better quality signals to listeners through digital terrestrial transmission; digital transmitters will be able to carry multiple channels and so new programmes can be broadcast all with the existing channel on the same transmitter; digitisation of studio and connectivity would improve the technical quality and efficiency of programme production; digitisation of archives would help preserve the content for a longer period and enable access to heritage programmes; and save power consumption on transmitters.

In the case of Doordarshan, Prasar Bharati has already begun work on forty digital terrestrial transmitters and other equipment.

The allocation for DD covers the networking of DTT through satellite, augmentation of DMCs by providing equipment and facilities for maintaining the digital infrastructure, providing five sets of digital measurement equipment at zonal offices, providing 60 UPS at High Power Transmitters to ensure uninterrupted power supply, R&D and Training, digitalisation of 31 partially digitalised and eight analogue studio centers, digitalisation of Archiving facilities, and digitalisation of news automation system and e-governance and IT Scheme.

Earlier, a senior official of the Ministry told indiantelevision.com that the Ministry had prepared a proposal for Rs 8 billion to All India Radio and Rs 6 billion to Doordarshan for completing digitisation.

It was pointed out that while private satellite television channels beaming via direct-to-home, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), or the soon to be launched Head in the sky (HITS) were already on digital, DD and AIR which were beaming terrestrially to reach all over the country had stepped up the process of digitisation.

The official said the work will involve digitisation of existing studios, establishment of digital transmitters, replacement and augmentation of old studio, transmitter and satellite broadcast equipment and setting up of High Definition TV (HDTV) facilities.

It is expected that digitisation will free spectrum currently used for analogue transmission, allowing more channels. There is a possibility that extra spectrum could be used by Doordarshan in a partnership model for revenue generation.
Two HDTV studios are being established by DD in Delhi and Mumbai, and field production and post production facilities in four metros. The HDTV uplink will be set up at Delhi, and HDTV terrestrial transmitters will be installed in four metros.

Out of 66 studio centres, 23 have either already been digitised, or are being digitised while 39 studio centers, which are partially digitised or analogue are planned to be fully digitised in the 11th Plan (by 2012). The remaining four analogue studios are proposed to be digitised in the 12th Plan.

It is planned to take up 40 locations where analogue High Power Transmitters are operational for setting up of Digital terrestrial transmitters (DTT) in the country. 14 obsolete High Power TV transmitters (UPTs) and sixty Lower Power TV transmitters (LPTs) will be replaced.

Satellite Earth Stations will be modernised using Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) in the 11th Plan.

MUMBAI: The UK‘s love for TV continues, with over a quarter (27 per cent) of UK internet users saying they watched TV online every week, an increase of three percentage points from 2010, and higher than any of the other countries surveyed. The popularity of a wide variety of free-to-view catch-up TV services such as BBC iPlayer has helped to drive online TV viewing in the UK.

The UK also saw the largest growth in digital video recorder (DVR) take-up, with over a third (36 per cent) of homes now owning a DVR (a 4 percentage point increase on 2009). Among the six countries surveyed, the UK is second only to the US, where 41 per cent of households own a DVR.

Overall, TV viewing in the UK increased by 7.6 per cent in 2010 compared with 2009, with the average person watching just over 4 hours of TV per day (242 minutes). This was the highest increase year-on-year among the countries surveyed, and 31 minutes more than the average of 211 minutes per person.

UK media watchdog Ofcom‘s sixth International Communications Market report into the global communications market looks at take-up, availability and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV and radio in 17 countries.

It shows that despite the economic downturn, global communications revenues grew by 3.4 per cent in 2010 compared with 2009, mainly driven by strong growth in the BRIC countries (Brazil, India, Russia and China).

The report also reveals that the UK customers are paying lower prices for their communications than many consumers across the world.

Social networking in wide use around the world: Social networking is a global phenomenon, with over three quarters of consumers in the markets we surveyed saying that they have visited a social networking site, with the majority saying they visit them on a daily basis. This is much higher among 18-24 year olds, with eight in ten (83 per cent) visiting on a daily basis.

Social networking sites are most popular in Italy, with 91 per cent ever having visited and a quarter visiting over five times a day (24 per cent), while in the UK eight out of ten (79 per cent) have ever visited with one in five visiting over five times a day

UK consumers are more likely to access social networking sites on a mobile phone than other countries, with 43 per cent of those with social networking site profiles saying they do so compared to just 30 per cent in the US. However UK social networkers say they have fewer friends online (168) than Americans (198) or Italians (216) – but more than the French (108) or Germans (137).

Consumers are also using social networking sites for breaking news, with one third (35 per cent) of UK consumers saying they do this and nearly half of French (45 per cent) and Italians (47 per cent) agreeing. Breaking news is more popular among 18-24 year olds in all countries.

Consumers getting a good deal in the UK: Ofcom research into the prices consumers pay for their communications services has found that prices in the UK compare favourably to those available in other countries.

The analysis examined the prices of a typical ‘basket‘ of communications services (fixed-line phone, mobile phone, broadband and pay TV) for five household types. It compared the prices available to consumers in the UK (in July 2011) with those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US. Overall, the UK offered the lowest prices for all five baskets based on buying services individually and four of the five baskets when including multi-service ‘bundles‘.

Overall, the price of mobile phone services in the UK were 36 per cent lower than in the next least expensive country (France) and were 10 per cent lower than a year previously. However, prices for low-use mobile phone services (such as pay as you go) in the UK increased between July 2010 and July 2011 (as they did in France, Germany and Italy). Fixed-line voice prices in the UK were also lower than in all other countries.

Looking at the prices for a typical family ‘basket‘ of communications services consisting of a fixed-line phone with high use, four mobile phones with varying use, a fixed broadband connection and a basic pay TV subscription, the lowest price available to consumers in the UK was ?114, second only to France (?79). Prices for this basket in the UK increased by 10 per cent between 2010 and 2011, largely due to increases in the prices of the low-use mobile phone services.

Superfast broadband rapidly becoming available: Overall availability of high-speed fixed-line broadband networks in the UK compares favourably to other European countries. By June 2011, 59 per cent of households had access to Virgin Media or BT‘s superfast services. However, just 4 per cent of UK households subscribed to superfast services in June 2011, compared with 40 per cent in Japan and 10 per cent in the US, although higher than in Germany (3 per cent), Italy (1.5 per cent) and Spain (2.2 per cent).

New spectrum that will be used for superfast mobile broadband networks using LTE technology has been auctioned in a number of countries. Some countries, such as Sweden, have already launched networks, with headline speeds of up to 100Mbit/s. Services in the UK are expected to launch in 2013 following the 4G spectrum auction in the second half of 2012.

Internet use drives high online ad spend: More and more advertisers are flocking to the internet across the globe, with the UK leading on the total proportion of advertising spent on the internet (29 per cent) – almost double the level for global internet advertising (15 per cent). UK online advertising spend in 2010 was almost the same as TV advertising (30 per cent), increasing by 16 per cent to reach ?4.1bn.

Ofcom CEO Ed Richards said, “Across the globe people are embracing e-commerce and social media with enthusiasm. Our research shows that the UK communications market is performing well with prices, the range of services and innovation standing up well against international benchmarks.

“There are also issues which we will monitor carefully, such as the future roll-out 4G mobile services. We are pressing ahead with plans to release this valuable spectrum at the end of next year which will enable new mobile services for consumers.”

MUMBAI: Media technology platform Komli Media has announced the launch of Real Time Bidding (RTB) enabled performance Ad platform – Atom.

RTB is a “disruptive technology” that allows media buyers to evaluate, bid on and purchase online ad inventory on an impression by impression basis, reaching precise audience at scale, the company said.

Komli Media is currently the only media network in India to develop and use this technology, it added.

Atom provides access to over 10 billion ad impressions per month, over 90 per cent reach into India‘s online audience (estimated 80 million + users) and coverage across hundreds of thousands of publishers including over 50 per cent of the top 200 publishers in India.

According to the official communiqué, with RTB capability on Atom, Komli‘s media network business gets a shot in the arm with high quality inventory, massive inventory volume, and precise audience buys, in turn driving significantly higher RoI on clients‘ campaigns. This technology has given Komli Media unparalleled competitive edge in the Asia Pacific market.

Komli Media VP and country head, media network- India and North America Gulshan Verma said, “The promise of 1-to-1 marketing is beginning to be realised by marketers. Some of our customers are already seeing the benefit of only paying for the impression they want.”

“With RTB enabled auction based media buying, the science of search advertising is coming to display advertising, driving quantum leap in effectiveness for display campaigns.

Advertisers are able to selectively buy audiences and impressions that matter, and pay exactly what the impression is worth. Display advertising is poised for solid growth globally and in India. We are excited to be the first RTB enabled ad platform in India and the largest by reach in Asia. We plan to roll out Atom across other key markets over the next few months.” Komli Media VP and business head- Atom Satish Kadu added.

MUMBAI: Apple has announced the launch of the iTunes Store in Brazil with a selection of Brazilian and international music from all the major labels and thousands of independent labels.

Launching with a catalogue of over 20 million songs, the iTunes Store in Brazil features local artists including Ivete Sangalo, Marisa Monte and the digital debut of Roberto Carlos‘ catalog, available to purchase and download along with a wide range of international artists including the Beatles, Rihanna, Coldplay and thousands more.

With most songs priced at 99 cents and most albums at $9.99, the iTunes Store in Brazil is the best way for iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music online.

The iTunes Store in Brazil offers over a thousand movies to rent or purchase, with many in HD, from studios including 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures.

The iTunes Store in Brazil now joins the App Store, which offers more than 500,000 apps to consumers in 123 countries, reaching hundreds of millions of iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users around the world. Customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps to date.

Apple is also bringing the iTunes Store to 15 additional Latin American countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.

The iTunes Store in Brazil and Latin America offer music from major labels EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music, and thousands of independent labels.

All music on iTunes comes in iTunes Plus, Apple‘s DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, says the company.