Category: Software

NEW DELHI: Yahoo! India today announced an annual advertising partnership with OLX.in, the free online classifieds portal whereby a permanent OLX link will feature on the Yahoo! India homepage under the featured partners section.

Yahoo! will also leverage advance display advertising capabilities on its premium media and communication properties to help OLX grow its brand and consumers in India.

OLX country manager Amarjit Batra said, “India is an important market for us and our partnership with Yahoo! underlines our commitment towards the same. Our association with Yahoo! provides us an extensive platform to engage with the vast set of untapped consumers across the 1000+ cities where we are present. This alliance will help us to make more people aware about the OLX brand proposition and offer them the best options to buy, sell, and rent products and services within their city.”
 
“Yahoo! is best positioned to connect brands with the right target audience. OLX‘s permanent presence on India‘s most visited homepage will provide it with access to Yahoo!‘s vast reach. Our advance display advertising solutions and superior targeting capabilities will provide strategic advantage to OLX‘s marketing efforts in India, said Yahoo! India MD Arun Tadanki.

OLX offers free classifieds in various categories like for sale, jobs, real estate, vehicles, services, classes and matrimonials in almost every city in India. OLX has a strong focus on India and has launched local language options in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Marathi for those users who prefer to consume local language content or are not proficient in English.

OLX also offers free mobile apps for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows mobile operating system to enable the increasing number of mobile internet smartphone users to use free classifieds on the go.

MUMBAI: US media conglomerate Disney-ABC Television Group‘s ABC Entertainment and the Warner Bros. Television Group (WBTVG) have reached a wide-ranging agreement regarding the digital distribution of series produced by Warner Bros. Television for US broadcaster ABC for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons.

Under the terms of the new agreement, ABC has the ability to distribute any series produced by WBTVG during the current 2011/12 and the 2012/13 seasons online via abc.com and Hulu‘s ad-supported platforms. The series will also be made available as part of ABC‘s branded video-on-demand offering available through a variety of cable, satellite and telco providers. Across these platforms, the five most recently televised episodes of each series will be available the day after their network broadcast.

Additionally, the agreement grants ABC the ability to simulcast its linear feed in all media, including as part of the network‘s authenticated product, which is currently under development.
 
WBTVG says that it is broadening its domestic off-network distribution rights, gaining flexibility to make series available earlier and on more platforms. WBTVG is able to offer select, highly-serialized series via SVOD platforms at the end of each broadcast season. Additionally, WBTVG has moved up the off-network syndication window so that it begins at the end of a series‘ third broadcast year. WBTVG retains in-season EST and out of season DVD and Blu-Ray rights.

Current ABC series produced by Warner Bros. Television Group include ‘The Middle‘, ‘Work It‘ and ‘Suburgatory‘.

ABC Entertainment Group executive VP, business affairs and administration Jana Winograde said, “This new agreement is a great example of our commitment to working with our production partners to find innovative solutions that allow us to offer ABC viewers access to their favorite series. Over the years, the Warner Bros. Television Group has been a tremendous partner, as both of our companies look to experiment and find new ways to build and strengthen our businesses.”

Warner Bros. Television Group executive VP Craig Hunegs said, “Our new agreement with our ABC network partners is a win all around. It makes it easier than ever for viewers to watch their favorite shows, it helps expand the ABC platform and ultimately it makes our series more valuable.”

NEW DELHI: Caught in its own mandate of giving a notice of at least six months to cable operators and multi-system operators for digitisation, the Government has put off the sunset date for the first phase to 30 June 2012 in place of March 2012 announced earlier.

This has been set out in a notification issued by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry listing out the specific cities and areas and the deadlines by which it would be ‘obligatory‘ for the cable operators to transmit or re-transmit in encrypted form all channels through a digital addressable system.

Under the Ordinance promulgated earlier this month, the Government had laid down that the six months notice will be given to the cable TV operators to enable them to install the necessary equipment for transmitting encrypted channels through a digital addressable system, in keeping with the deadlines set for this purpose for various states and cities. 
 
The Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Amendment Ordinance 2011, which is an amendment of the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, is aimed at putting in place the infrastructure to meet the deadlines set by the Government for digitisation of cable TV networks.

The Government has earlier announced a timetable for complete digitisation of cable television in the four metros by 31 March, 2012. 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.

This will also mean an end to the analogue era and customers of cable networks must have a digital addressable set-top-box irrespective of whether they wish to receive free-to-air or encrypted (pay) channels.

For the second phase, the 38 specific cities and areas which have been listed in the notification are – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Kanpur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Patna, Indore, Bhopal, Thane, Ludhiana, Agra, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Vadodara, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Rajkot, meerut, Kalyan-Dombivali, Varanasi, amrtisar, Navi Mumbai, Aurangabad, Solapur, Allahabad, Jabalpur, Srinagar, Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Howrah, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Maysore and Jodhpur.

Laying down rules for registering cable operators, the Ordinance says new registration will not be given to any cable operator who fails to transmit or retransmit encrypted TV signals through a digital addressable system from the date notified for the purpose for the area in which he is operating.

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MUMBAI: UTV Indiagames has partnered with Internet services provider MTS to offer their ‘Games on demand‘ (GoD) service to all the MBlaze customers.

GoD is an online gaming subscription service provided via broadband.

MTS‘ MBlaze users will get unlimited access to gaming content for price starting Rs 49 per month. Once downloaded, the service allows the user to play the offered games multiple times. The games offered include Need For speed, Battlefield 2, FIFA and Cricket. 
 
MTS India director value added services and product development Sergey Korobov said, “At MTS, our endeavour has been to cater to the demand of today‘s ‘on the move generation‘ by providing seamless access to high speed mobile broadband as well as high quality online content. A first of its kind service, GoD provides access to more than 350 games.”

UTV Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal added, “In our attempt to make gaming a main stream mode of entertainment across the country, this tie up with MTS is the perfect integration. Offering GoD through wireless connection is the perfect fitment to reach out to the users. With world class content provided across platforms through GoD we want to make sure that users gain access to quality content across platforms.”
All gaming titles offered are official titles licensed from major global publishers like EA, Codemasters, Microsoft, Atari spanning across genres like Action, Arcade, Adventure, Racing and Sports.

The packs available are silver plan (Rs 49 per month for 30 games), educational plan (Rs 99 per month for 50 games), gold plan (Rs 99 for 250 games) and platinum plan (Rs 199 per month for 350 games), the company said. 

MUMBAI: Fashionandyou.com, a Smile Group venture, has raised funding of $40 million from new and current investors.

Led by Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Nokia Growth Partners are the investors that have participated in this round.

Goldsquare will use the funds for its growth initiatives, including acquisitions, starting new business categories, as well as accelerating its growth in existing categories and geographies.
 
The new capital will enable Fashionandyou.com to further accelerate its member acquisition strategy and solidify the supply chain and distribution mechanism.

Sequoia Capital India previously invested in Goldsquare to the tune of $8 million in 2010. This investment was used towards growing the company’s product offering, strengthening its enterprise technology and expanding its distribution capacity.
 
NVP India managing director Niren Shah said, “Fashionandyou.com has been growing exponentially, and its brand is becoming synonymous with online fashion in India. The company has managed to scale its business significantly because of its early mover advantage, the strength of its experienced team of professionals from the Internet and retail industries, and the company’s strong supplier relationships. We are proud to add Fashionandyou.com to our growing roster of premier e-commerce investments globally, and believe this team possesses the ability to grow the company further and uphold the company’s leadership position in India as the e-commerce market continues to expand at a significant pace.”

MUMBAI: Dish TV plans to raise up to $200 million from overseas investors even as the government has mandated digitisation, sources familiar with the development said.

The company has applied to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for approval. The application is slated for consideration on 15 November.

“Dish TV is looking at tapping a single or a clutch of investors and it could be through the GDR route or a mix of instruments. The aim is to build a war chest and seize the market opportunity that the digitisation mandate would open up. The push also would be for boosting its high definition (HD) subscriber base,” the sources added.
 
The company’s senior executives could not be contacted.

Dish TV had early this year said in an earnings call that it had no requirement to raise capital to fund its aggressive subscriber growth and was nearing profitability at the net level. A government-backed mandate for digitisation, initially in the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, has, however, made the DTH operator change its plans.
 
The promoter holding stands at 64.7 per cent. In 2009, US-based private equity firm Apollo Management had taken 11 per cent stake in the company for $100 million.

Dish TV has a cash balance of around Rs 3.4 billion.

“The company is gearing up for digitisation and HD. The acquisition of HD subscribers is Rs 3,000 while in case of other subscribers it is around 2,200,” a media analyst said.

Dish TV, India’s largest DTH operator, has added 1.735 million subscribers during the first seven months of this fiscal. 

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable & Datacom has posted a standalone net loss of Rs 103.18 million for the second quarter of this fiscal ended 30 September.

The multi-system operator (MSO) had posted a profit of Rs 40.39 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

Hathway‘s total income stood at Rs 1.28 billion, a marginal dip over the year-ago period (Rs 1.3 billion).
 
Total expense, however, rose to Rs 1.07 billion (from Rs 943.96 million in corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal).

The payout to pay channels during the three-month period stood at Rs 345.6 million, compared to Rs 280.33 million in the year-ago quarter.

Hathway‘s net loss can be attributed to depreciation/ amortization/ impairment which stood at Rs 252.70 million. The company also lost Rs 10.53 billion due to fluctuation of exchanges.

The MSO reported profit from operations (before other income, interest, depreciation and exceptional items) of Rs 218.28 million for the quarter under review. 
 
Hathway said that as per management estimates, its economic interest in the Ebitda of its several subsidiaries/JVs/associate companies for the quarter under review, would aggregate to approximately Rs 210 million based on the unaudited accounts of such entities.

The MSO disclosed that out of Rs 4.8 billion IPO money, it has utilised Rs 3.91 billion as on 30 September.

Hathway said that in anticipation of the Government‘s digitisation mandate, it has modernised its head ends in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad by installing state-of-the-art technologies from Ericsson, UK. This implementation provides the company with enhanced capacities to carry additional channels at higher levels of quality.

MUMBAI: Asianet Satellite Communications Ltd, promoted by Rajan Raheja who also controls Hathway Cable & Datacom, has taken the radical decision of switching off its analogue cable TV service within a year and plans to make a fresh investment of Rs 1 billion as it pushes to become India‘s first multi-system operator (MSO) to offer only digital cable.

For starters, the Kerala-based MSO has just completed converting Trivandrum into a full digital network. Asianet is offering its Trivandrum subscribers five bouquet options up to 150 channels and plans to upgrade this to 220 channels within three months.

“We have become the first cable TV service provider in India to achieve this milestone, well ahead of the national government‘s full digitisation mandate by December 2014. We have 75,000 direct subscribers in Trivandrum and our target is to completely digitise our network in Kerala within nine months,” said Asianet Satellite Communications president and COO Sankaranarayana.

Asianet has already invested Rs 1 billion towards digitisation and seeded 350,000 set-top boxes. The net-breakeven regional MSO has 615,000 direct subscribers.

“We will be investing Rs 1 billion within a year. We will require Rs 750 million to digitise our direct subscribers. We are also looking at doing some amount of digitisation for secondary subscribers,” said Sankaranaryana.

Asianet offers the digital set-top boxes free. “We are subsidising the STBs. We believe our pay channel content cost will come down. The ARPU (average revenue per user) for digital is Rs 200 while in case of analogue is Rs 150,” averred Sankaranaryana.

Asianet, which was in talks with US private equity giant Providence for diluting a minority stake in 2007, is not looking at offloading any equity now. “We are not in talks with any private equity firm. We have decided to digitise our network on our own. We have access to vendor financing and debt. We have a healthy Ebitda because we own the last mile,” said Sankaranaryana.

Kerala‘s dominant MSO has a technical tie up with Cisco for digitisation. “Digitisation will also help us in further improving our broadband services,” said Sankaranaryana.

MUMBAI: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the ‘United States Consumer Electronics Report Q4 2011 report to their offering.

The US consumer electronics devices market, defined as the addressable market for computing devices, mobile handsets and AV products, is projected to be worth around $239.4 billion in 2011. This is expected to increase to $276.6 billion by 2015 at a CAGR of three per cent, driven by premium TV sets, smartphones and notebooks.

Computers BMI forecasts US PC hardware sales of $144.8 billion in 2011. CAGR for the 2011-2015 period will be about 2.5 per cent, but multimedia and entertainment notebooks are growth areas.

US PC sales grew strongly in 2010, boosted by a revival of the business market. BMI projects the market is on course for total PC sales of around 90 billion in 2011. Notebooks remain the largest product category but face competition from the smartphones of RIM Apple, HTC and other vendors as well as tablet notebooks spearheaded by Apple‘s iPad.

Mobile Handsets: Total US market handset sales are expected to grow to around 160 million units in 2015. With an increasingly saturated US market, handset revenues will be driven by emerging product areas such as smartphones, touch screen phones and HD camera phones. Smartphones will be a key growth area and are forecast to account for more than 50 per cent of the US market handset sales for the first time in 2011, with Android models the fastest growing handset market segment. As new long-term evolution (LTE) networks began to come online, this should boost replacement handset purchases.

MUMBAI: UK Pay TV service provider Sky has unveiled a free Sky Movies app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad which offers Sky TV customers a quick and easy way to find the movies they love.

The new app brings users up-to-the-minute information about Sky Movies, Sky Movies Box Office and the latest cinema releases, listing movies via thumbnails or full page view, enabling Sky Movies customers to get even more value for their subscription.

Each full page view of films currently available on Sky Movies includes a review of the film and an option to Remote Record the movie to the Sky HD box to watch later or link to the Sky Go app to watch it live.

The Sky Movies app offers top picks of the day for Sky Movies content as well as information about what‘s coming up on the service within the next week and next month. Movie trailers and reviews can also be found on the app and an Android version will be available early next year.

Sky Movies director Ian Lewis said, “We are really pleased to be able to add the Sky Movies app to our already strong offering of iPad and iPhone apps. Combined with the Sky+ and Sky Go apps, customers now have even more ways to discover and enjoy the films they want to watch, either at home or on the move. We continually strive to give our customers the best possible movie service and this is just one additional feature out of many we have planned for Sky Movies over the coming months.”.