2009/07/24

BBC Dumps Commercial Internet-TV Plan - WSJ.com

BBC Dumps Commercial Internet-TV Plan - WSJ.com

Project Kangaroo jumps its last jump and is being closed down and the technology sold to Arquiva Ltd (the technology bit that came out of NTL).

Kangaroo was effectively killed last February after BSkyB complained that they'd get too much of an advantage in the emerging VoD/IPTV market and the Competition Commission agreed with them.

BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm of the Beeb) is still interested in distributing content over the Internet and is looking at other ways of now doing this.

BBC's iPlayer already supports on-demand and downloaded content and could be modified to support a pay TV model.

2009/07/23

Google Voice now berry'd up

Google has released a Blackberry verison of the Google Voice application so it's now available on Blackberry phones as well as Android phones. Unfortunately Google Voice is still only available to Google users in the US (or who have registered with a US Google Mail account etc).

Google are rumoured be to be in talks with a German company who will provide them with infrastructure in Europe (including the UK).

When Google do launch in Europe the new VoIP entrants have the most to lose and some must already be worried. BT will still win as they own 85% of the infrastructure into premises and until there's fibre services rolled out from alternate carriers they still provide the last mile (and much of the backhaul).

Apple sells iPhones

Apple have shipped 5.2m iPhones during the last quarter which helped them achieve net profits of $1.23bn which is up 15% on last year.

Apple are still seen to be innovating in the phone market and there are still rumours of a 10" netbook (or large iPod touch) type device. They still have the opportunity to grab a new chunk of the market if they can release a truly innovative device.

AT&T go plastic

Plastic Logic makers of eInk technologies have done a deal with Barnes and Noble to supply their eBook store. AT&T will supply connectivity.

The unnamed Plastic Logic eReader will be in direct competition with Amazon's Kindle which is doing very well.

When will these devices come to Europe? The main eReader available in the UK is still the Sony unit.