Digital Lifescapes

The Texas Independent Game Conference takes place in Austin on July 22nd/23rd and attendees will get the chance to hear from indie veterans willing to share their successes and their experience as well as presentations addressing market trends, distribution, on-line security, development tools, IP protection, structuring a deal and the opportunities in the mobile and casual game segments. Highlights include keynotes from Warren Spector and Greg Costikyan and sessions from Gordon Walton (Bioware), Jay Moore (Garage Games), Dan Prigg (Real Networks) and Jessica Tams (Casual Game Association). A Game Demo Party has been added to the program and attendees are encouraged to bring their games and get direct feedback from other developers and publishers. The full program is available online , and registration for the event is just $105. �The Conference gives indie game developers the chance to hear from their peers, to hear from people who have faced the same challenges� said Conference Direc...

I'm starting a series of columns about the challenges and opportunities for broadband service providers, as they embark upon their journey into the great unknown -- launching an IPTV service offering, with the intent to attract consumers and eventually make a reasonable profit. Understanding Consumer Preferences for IPTV "Most industry analysts believe that before consumers will jump on the IPTV bandwagon, service providers must deliver an experience far more personalized than traditional broadcast, cable or satellite television. But appealing to a diverse set of viewing habits from an increasingly distracted online population isn�t easy. Most service providers are shifting focus toward a deeper understanding of segmented consumer preferences, which are growing more complex and varied than ever before." In my latest column for Broadband 2.0 magazine, I challenge some of the traditional and widely-held beliefs about consumers� television viewing habits. I also attempt to r...

Closely following recent market research study results indicating that mainstream consumers aren't embracing digital media on their mobile phone, a surprise contender has decided to enter the heated contest. Media features and lifestyle applications will be key to the ability of RIM's BlackBerry e-mail device to capture a bigger slice of the broader consumer market, the company's co-chief executive said on Tuesday. "We'll be definitely supporting more forms of media, it's a big part of our direction," Jim Balsillie told Reuters, adding that delivering features such as photography, music and video with the BlackBerry "opens up some bigger markets". "It's totally adjacent and complementary in some respects, but also in other respects it lays right on top of our existing market." The BlackBerry has become a staple for business people, politicians, lawyers and other professionals, but has yet to gain widespread popularity among mainstre...

The number of 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers worldwide will boom more than ten-fold from 2.5 million in 2006 to more than 300 million in 2011 -- but market growth in 2006-07 will be restrained by a lack of compelling devices, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. "A lack of compelling devices and content led to delayed launches and slow take-up of WCDMA and EV-DO services, and early HSDPA and EV-DO Revision A services are expected to suffer from the very same problems," says Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and co-author of the report. Saadi notes that most HSDPA services are launching with only PC cards and notebooks, although a number of early handsets are also arriving. "However it is striking that as of June no major vendor has unveiled plans for 'EV-DO Rev. A' handsets, although data cards are on the way." A lack of a wide range of compelling handsets will slow mass-market takeup of 3.5G mobile broadband services in...

Navigation vendors and automakers alike have been engaged in a continual struggle to differentiate their navigation offerings. 2006 has finally brought such features as traffic information and text-to-speech to navigation. ABI Research analysts believe the next steps are 3D renderings, images of buildings, and location-aware search, all of which play right into the strengths of Web portals. "Google, and Microsoft's Live.com, are portals that provide visual display and location-aware search very similar in functionality and appearance to some of the hybrid connected navigation and telematics systems in Japan, such as Honda's Internavi and Toyota's G-Book," says ABI Research's principal transportation analyst Dan Benjamin. "This type of integration really makes a lot of sense. Google has been making a big push into location-aware advertising, and the portals have already made arrangements to get satellite and/or photographic imagery that is not necessarily ...

The upcoming August 9th auction of U.S. wireless spectrum -- intended to launch a new generation of mobile broadband/video -- is already a magnet for new and old media players with vastly differing agendas. Among the 252 entities filing applications by the deadline are DirecTV and EchoStar Communications, which ordinarily are arch rivals but have teamed up as a single bidder. Another consortium unites four large cable system operators � including Time Warner � with cell phone carrier Sprint Nextel. Also in the mix are private equity financier Carlyle Group via its ownership of Hawaiian Telcom and, separately, Korean telco SKT, according to auctioneer the Federal Communications Commission. "With such a diverse group of bidders, there will likely be widely disparate valuations for spectrum," notes Kagan Research senior consultant Sharon Armbrust. For example, incumbent mobile phone carriers simply want to expand their existing wireless voice services with more spectrum-intensiv...

The Asia-Pacific region is leading the global revolution of IPTV in infrastructure deployments, applications development, and subscriber adoption, reports In-Stat. The region's broadband penetration and proactive regulatory support help to foster the fastest-growing IPTV market in the world. "With IPTV, incumbent telcos have the opportunity to fundamentally change their broadband customers' video service experience from the traditional video clip streaming and downloading model," says Bryan Wang, In-Stat analyst. "IPTV is expected to be the real killer application in the telcos' broadband services portfolio that will increase ARPU and preserve user stickiness." In-Stat's market study found the following: - By 2011, the Asia-Pacific market is expected to reach 39 million IPTV subscribers. - Total IPTV revenue in the region will reach $8.1 billion by 2011. - Telcos will need to find a unique approach to packaging and bundling in order to attract custom...

According to the Hollywood Reporter, physical album sales continued to decline in the U.S. during the first six months of 2006, down 4.2 percent in comparison to the same period last year. However, Nielsen SoundScan figures through the week ending July 2 indicate that digital sales might loft the business as a whole. Sales of digital albums soared 126% percent during the first half of the year, while digital single tracks rose 77 percent. Looking at the entire sales picture -- comprising physical albums, digital albums and digital tracks -- overall sales to date this year have actually gained about one-tenth of a percentage point over the first six months of 20005. A total of 270.6 million physical albums sold domestically through the end of June, representing a drop of 12 million units from last year's six-month total of 282.6 million. Digital albums improved by 8.2 million units, with 14.7 million units sold since January versus just 6.4 million units in the first half of 2005. D...

USA Today reports that Yahoo first encouraged consumers to create blogs and photo pages with text and pictures. Now, the Internet portal wants them to make advertisements, too. Today, Yahoo touts a new look for its front page by asking people to pull out the video camera, open up the editing software and create 12-second commercials for Yahoo. The ads will be shown at video.yahoo.com. Yahoo Vice President Allen Olivo says user-generated advertising is just another way of having customers do testimonials for the site. "Any advertiser or business that isn't maximizing the power of what users have to say is crazy," he says. "The brand belongs to the customer. Who better to express what we're all about than them?" To kick off the campaign, Yahoo enlisted students from four art schools � Yale, San Francisco Art Institute, Parsons School of Design and London Film Academy � to create ads, with scripts written by Yahoo's advertising agency, OgilivyOne. IMHO, any...

Growing availability to low cost, high-speed and often wireless Internet service appears to be propelling laptop and notebook sales around the world, helping close the so-called "digital divide" between technology�s haves and have-nots, say researchers from Ipsos Insight in their annual 'The Face of The Web' study of global Internet trends. Global notebook PC ownership grew a healthy eight percentage points in 2005, while desktop PC ownership growth stagnated around the world for the first time. At the end of 2005, 34 percent of households globally owned a notebook or tablet PC compared with 20 percent in 2003. Meanwhile, global desktop PC ownership remained unchanged between 2004 and 2005 at 60 percent. Given the surge in ownership, it is becoming increasingly clear that notebook PCs will become a driving 'change agent' in consumers� PC usage and Internet behavior, particularly in more developed global markets with greater access to Wi-Fi based wireless netwo...

Informitv reports that Two Way TV Australia has signed a three-year deal to provide interactive games to PCCW�s 'Now TV' in Hong Kong, currently the largest internet protocol television (IPTV) service in the world. Two Way TV Australia has a licensing arrangement with Two Way TV in the UK and has been looking to expand its interactive gaming services in the Asian market. The company already operates interactive games on Foxtel and Austar in Australia and Sky Television in New Zealand. Two Way TV Australia has also signed a deal to provide interactive services to the News Corporation Star Group in Asia. This is the first interactive games deployment on the Now TV IPTV platform, which provides over a hundred channels to subscribers in Hong Kong via a broadband network. PCCW has attracted over 550,000 subscribers to the Now TV service since its launch in late 2003. The operator has previously used interactivity to provide video-on-demand services and the ability to purchase cinema...

Let's be candid, the design of a conventional pay-TV set top box (STB) and associated remote control leave a lot to be desired. The CE device appearance often lacks visual appeal, and the user interface seems as though it was developed without ever considering a mainstream consumer's needs. Therefore, MatrixStream's latest creation is very different -- Scientific Atlanta and Motorola, look and learn. MatrixStream is now making its attractive IMX1020 1080P H.264 set top box available for distribution as part of their end to end IPTV platform. This STB can deliver video on demand (VOD) and streaming television channels instantly in up to 1920 x 1080 resolution over any best effort broadband connection with no quality of service (QoS) required -- via MatrixStream's proprietary XMS technology. The underlying STB video delivery technology may be of great interest to engineers, but as a product marketer I'm more impressed by the MatrixStream human factors innovation. IMHO...

The promise of local online advertising, like some super-charged directory delivering motivated customers to the hundreds of thousands of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) across America, is compelling. The reality reminds us that smaller businesses, with smaller marketing budgets and smaller staffs to handle marketing chores, typically take longer to change than do large corporations. In fact, U.S. local online ad spending will surpass the $1 billion mark for the first time only this year, according to eMarketer projections in a new report, "Local Online Advertising: Measuring the Potential." However, that spending figure will more than double to $2.8 billion in 2008, and will reach nearly $5 billion by 2010. Where is all that growth going to come from? It's the newspaper and yellow-page publisher loses, primarily. Like taking candy from a baby, as they say.

The City of Paris aims to provide Wi-Fi internet access across the entire city by the end of next year, with at least one quarter to benefit from free connectivity. Mayor Bertrand Delanoe outlined plans to set up 400 free Wi-Fi access points next year, according to a report by Reuters. The free access points will be located in parks, squares, libraries, and public areas and will be set up through private contracts. In a further bid to drive high speed internet connectivity, Delanoe also proposed to cut taxes on fiber optic cable deployment. Existing cable installations would receive a tax break of around 25 percent, while new deployments could benefit from cuts as high as 90 percent on the first 400m. Sixty percent of Parisian domestic households already have high speed broadband, and Delanoe hopes to have 80 percent of all buildings within the city connected to fiber cables by 2010. Municipal governments all over the world now consider broadband infrastructure investment an essential ...

According to the Hollywood Reporter, with the number of active DVD releases in the market expected to pass the 60,000-unit mark by year's end, studios finally are slowing their release pace, perhaps in recognition of the worsening shelf-space crunch at retail. The first half of this year saw 9.2 percent fewer DVDs come to market than in the first half of 2005, according to preliminary estimates from the DVD Release Report, an industry tip sheet. The Report pegs the number of first-half 2006 titles at 5,758, down from 6,392 in the first half of last year. "Call it the 2005 product bulge," editor Ralph Tribbey writes in the DVD Release Report. "Call it maturity. Call it a creative response to space limitations." The first-half 2006 results are virtually identical to first-half 2004, when 5,749 DVDs came to market, Tribbey said.

MarketWatch reports that since coming on the market in June, Motorola Inc.'s much-hyped Q smartphone has sold at a steady pace. Now the question is whether the company can meet their aggressive sales target. Investors will get a clearer idea of how well the Q is selling when Motorola reports second-quarter results. The company expects to ship 1.5 million units in the first 180 days, though Motorola has shown signs it could deliver 2 million units, according to some analysts. Like other smartphones, the Q is visually appealing, with its sleek keyboard, color screen and Internet capabilities. It also plays video and music. Critics, however, it's not as 'easy to use' as competing devices offered by Research In Motion Ltd. and Palm Inc., and is less suitable for serious business users. So, what exactly is the target market for this new device? According to James Faucette, an analyst with PacificCrest, the retailers he has polled say "wide appeal has been limited" ...

International Herald Tribune reports that while some advertising and media industry executives seem to take the spread of consumer ad-avoidance technology like podcasts, digital video recorders (DVR) and video-on-demand (VOD) as a personal insult, Michael Conrad is not surprised that people are choosing to reject commercial messages. "People love great advertising, but they don't want the bad stuff, the mediocre stuff -- and a lot of it is just annoying," said Conrad, a former worldwide chief creative officer at the ad agency Leo Burnett. "A lot more has to be done to produce excellence and avoid mediocrity." In an effort to address this apparent shortcoming, Conrad, who retired from Leo Burnett in 2003, has turned his attention to a new project: the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, an academic program aimed at teaching advertising and media professionals to lead their organizations in more imaginative ways. In September, the Berlin School will start a part...

The International Engineering Consortium (IEC) is offering a white paper that provides an overview of a recent mobile smartphone research study. "The pace of our lives and the data content in it is increasing exponentially. Millions of people are working outside a typical office setting. Mobile information workers are using numerous tools and processes for collecting data to complete their tasks. Mobile technology advances are converging to improve the tools available for these mobile information workers. The integration of wireless connectivity, found in cell phones and pagers, with computer applications is providing a selection of new and small mobile devices that have shown promise to enhance the effectiveness of a mobile workforce. Wireless mobile devices are seen as tools to improve mobile workforce productivity, reduce operational costs, and increase customer satisfaction. Voice and text messaging remain the killer applications for mobile devices." The white paper is av...

U.S. Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John Cornyn (R-TX) officially launched the U.S. Senate RFID Caucus in Washington, DC. The event included opening remarks by Co-Chairs Dorgan and Cornyn, a panel discussion with industry experts, and vendor demonstrations. ABI Research principal RFID analyst Michael J. Liard served as a panelist at this landmark event, which was attended by more than 150 people, including Senators and Senate staff members. The Caucus has been created to help 'educate' Senators about RFID technology benefits, policy changes, and applications. It will also help policymakers understand how the U.S. can remain globally competitive in RFID technology implementation and innovation. The event was the first in a series of programs designed to proactively 'push back hype' and promote better understanding of the technology. In addition to ABI Research's delegate, panel participants included representatives from IBM, ODIN Technologies, the U.S. Department o...

NAMM, the International Music Products Association, opened its 2006 Summer Session trade show today, which runs through Sunday, July 16, at the Convention Center in Austin, Texas -- the live music capital of the world. Approximately 20,000 music products industry professionals from 60 countries are expected to attend the Summer Session to view the latest musical instruments and products from more than 500 exhibiting companies. In addition to the many exhibits, there are a variety of activities scheduled, including "An Evening with Jimmie Vaughan & Special Guests," presented by Fender and NAMM, which is free to all Summer Session attendees. NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond and a panel of industry leaders will present the second annual "State of the Industry Address," covering the current business climate and what's next in the music products industry. Throughout the show, 'NAMM University' is offering more than 40 free educational sessions. Scheduled...