Christophe Cauvy
Digital Director Europe at McCann Erickson
BBC smartphone future. Smartphones are not only revolutionising the mobile phone industry. They are also about to change the way we use computers. The mobile phone industry is in trouble. Network operators are squeezed for margins. Handset makers either suffer sharp losses or fight hard to stay profitable. Hurting most are the stars of years past, like market leader Nokia and eternal runners-up Motorola and Sony Ericsson. 'Expensive' sells They specialise in so-called feature-rich mobile phones - work horses that deliver good performance but are neither cheap-and-cheerful nor smart-but-expensive.
But with the world still feeling the impact of the global recession, it is this middle market that suffers most. "When the downturn hit, we went from an annual growth rate of 10% to a 10% decline between the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009," says Anders Runevad, global head of sales for Sony Ericsson. It is true across all phone makes. Back to the drawing board But getting smart is not easy. The G-factor.
Google launches piggyback browser as war with Microsoft gathers. TV vs Video. Catch-up TV : le match - Blogs Economie : l’analyse de Dominique. Canal +, TF1 et M6 négocient discrètement un projet qu’ils pourraient présenter en commun et qui modifie encore un peu plus la « télévision de papa ». catch-up-tv121009 Il ne s’agit pas pour ces chaînes de la diffusion d’un spectacle. Mais, selon nos informations, demettre en commun leurs forces sur Internet pour construire une plate-forme commune de télévision de rattrapage, qui est en train de devenir le vrai canal d’avenir.
Beaucoup de téléspectateurs connaissent ce qu’on appelle en bon français la catch-up TV, qui consiste à regarder un programme de télévision après sa diffusion. 10 millions de Français utilisent désormais régulièrement ce type de service, et un jeune sur deux dans la tranche 15-24 ans. L’objectif est double. C’est une étape de plus dans le changement de modèle du média audiovisuel. En revanche, le danger, mortel pour elles, est d’être marginalisé en tant que diffuseur. Alors, n’allons pas trop vite. la Télé de papa n’est pas condamnée.
Virgin Media revenues beat forecasts | Media. Virgin Media beat analysts' forecasts for the third quarter, adding 8,100 net new cable TV households and boosting revenues by 1.3% to £953m. Overall, the company added 17,800 new customers in the third quarter. The cable operator reported a year-on-year increase in operating cash flow (OCF) – broadly equivalent to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) – of 6.8% to £348m for the quarter ended 30 September. Average revenue per user rose 5.3% to a record £44.24, almost a pound per user ahead of average analysts' forecasts. The company said that it managed to increase its broadband customer base by 39,000 to 3.77 million. Customers taking high-speed 10Mb or faster broadband services have risen 157% year on year to 2.7 million, or 72% of Virgin's customer base. Virgin Media added 37,000 customers to its TV service, taking customer numbers to 3.71 million, with video on demand (VoD) services accessed by 55% of customers at least once per month.
Google seeks to turn YouTube rights clash into profit | Business. Google is seeking to drag YouTube into profit by convincing music and film footage rights owners to make advertising revenue from their content rather than remove it from the video-sharing site for breach of copyright. The company has been touting a fingerprinting system for rights holders that means YouTube can identify their material even when it has been altered and made part of user-generated content such as wedding videos or satirical clips. First developed two years ago, the ContentID system is attracting record labels, TV producers and sports rights owners keen to make more money from the web. Google's computers compare all the material uploaded to YouTube – around 20 hours every minute – against "ID files" from a 100,000-hour library of reference material from the rights holders.
The system creates reports of what is viewed where and how often. Rights holders then have the choice to either block their content or make money from it. But there is some way to go.
The Song Decoders at Pandora. Google launches music search with Lala and iLike | Technology | Hit streaming service Spotify eyes U.S. music fans | Technology. Social Network. Early Tremors: Is It Time for Another Social Network Shakeout? - Faint rumblings have begun in the social networking landscape. Facebook acquired smaller rival FriendFeed in August. Friendster, viewed as an also-ran in the U.S., has refocused its operations on the Asia-Pacific region, where it is among the leaders in traffic. News Corp., owner of MySpace, has reshuffled executives and restructured the unit as traffic growth slows. Experts at Wharton say that these moves and others may be the first hints of a shakeout in the social networking market.
Social networking sites allow individuals to connect online and share content like photos and video. When Knowledge@Wharton wrote about social networking sites back in 2006, experts noted that some high-fliers may go from “hot” to “not” quickly. What’s unclear is where social networking goes from here. For instance, Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed revolved largely around a talent and technology grab. Multipurpose Sites with Scale However, these market dynamics may take time to play out. News Corp.
In search of the perfect Facebook and Twitter client. I use Twitter and Facebook a lot. Probably more than 99.9999% of people in the world. I am in search of the perfect client that will help me use Facebook and, particularly, Twitter (which I use a lot more than Facebook because that is the best place to network with other technology professionals). I am still looking. The perfect client does not exist. First, I use my iPhone (and now my Droid) for Twitter a LOT. My wife, @maryamie, uses Facebook on her iPhone all the time.
So, I must have the best possible iPhone client. This week? On the Droid I use Twidroid, which does support lists (an advantage of being a developer on the Android platform is that you can release software two to six weeks faster than on the iPhone because there isn’t a centralized approval process you need to go through. Second, I use both Windows 7 (which rocks a lot more than most Mac fans will admit) and the latest Macintoshes. The thing is I’ve been trying to live my life completely in the cloud.
Readers would pay for online news, study shows | Media | The Gua. Rupert Murdoch argues free newspaper websites is a 'flawed' business model Photograph: Saul Loeb/Getty Images Rupert Murdoch's plans to impose fees for newspaper websites received a morale boost from research suggesting that as many as 48% of British and American consumers would be willing to pay a few pounds a month for online news. A study by the Boston Consulting Group found a higher than expected level of willingness to stump up for journalism on the web. Britain and the US ranked lowest among nine countries surveyed, with as many as 66% of Finns, 63% of Germans and 62% of Italians polled declaring themselves open to paying for access to news websites. At present, only 12% of British readers pay anything for online news – the smallest proportion of any nation in the study. "The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, consumers are willing to pay for meaningful content," said John Rose, a senior partner at BCG in New York.