U.K. wireless microphone companies are irate over government plans for paying for the spectrum move they're required to make, they said Wednesday. The Office of Communications decided in June to clear the 800 MHz band used by those in what’s called program-making and special events and turn it over to mobile applications. Now it’s seeking suggestions on how to compensate users required to switch spectrum. The criteria for funding eligibility, however, fall far short of what’s required, the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group said.
There will be 418 million netbook and laptop users in the world by 2017, producing 1.8 exabytes of mobile data traffic a month, the Coda Research Consultancy said. An exabyte is two to the 16th power bytes, a billion billion. The firm forecast mobile broadband revenue of more than $50 billion from netbook and laptop users by 2017, the Asia- Pacific region leading with 162 million users. Europe is expected to have 94 million users and North America 58 million. Many mobile broadband users will be using LTE connections. LTE users are expected to number 38 million in 2013 and 209 million by 2017. LTE uptake will be greatly skewed in the short to medium term toward European and North American markets, where revenue per user will be highest. China will also have significant adoption.
Nokia posted a 66 percent year-over-year drop in Q2 profit, the company said Thursday. The manufacturer’s global market share hit 38 percent, a two percent year-over-year decline. It stuck to its forecast that the mobile market will fall some 10 percent year-over-year in 2009, but it expects its market share to remain unchanged from 2008. The phone maker shipped 103.2 million phones in the quarter, down 15 percent.
The percentage of cellphone-only homes varies widely by market, Arbitron said. The radio ratings provider developed market-level data as it has sought more members of cellphone- only homes for its panels, it said. It used information from the 151 markets where it measures radio ratings through diaries and combined it with information from the National Health Interview Survey, it said, and the highest penetration found was in Bryan-College Station, Texas, where 38 percent of the households use only mobile. The lowest was Hamptons- Riverhead, N.Y., at 5 percent, Arbitron said. “The data indicates that there is a wide variation by region and market characteristics such as the percent of urban/suburban/rural population and age and ethnic distribution of the market population,” it said. Markets with college campuses and military bases have particularly high proportions of cellphone-only homes, it said.
Some 41 percent of consumers are likely to choose a smartphone as their next mobile device, a trend that could alter the relationship between handset OEMs and wireless carriers, research firm Yankee Group said. Smartphones will account for 38 percent of all handsets by 2013, it forecast. Increased competition in the smartphone space, rising consumer expectations and tighter budgets will make carriers and handset makers work more closely and on “a more level playing field,” Yankee said.
Eight percent of adult broadband users stream up to 91 minutes of online video weekly, an “extreme techies” segment in which 38 percent also connect their computers to televisions to watch video, according to new Nielsen research. The CTAM-commissioned study used both “attitudinal and behavioral data” across TV, computers and mobile phones, creating eight categories of broadband users based on their engagement with video on different platforms, said Christie Kawada, vice president of Nielsen’s Custom Television Group. In the extreme-techie segment, 63 percent are male, 47 percent are married and 74 percent said they access online video from the desktop, the study said. Sixty-four percent watch TV shows online to supplement their regular TV viewing, 60 percent “typically” know what they want to watch online before sitting down and 55 percent say they have found shows online and then watched them on TV, it said. The last three findings are more than double the average for all broadband users. Extreme techies on average also own “slightly over” four cross-platform devices for watching TV or movies, double the total sample’s average, and they have the highest percentage of viewership on game consoles (46), mobile phones (33) and “set top media boxes” (17), Nielsen said. “We now have critical insights that go far deeper than any existing research to explore how these elusive segments may shape the future of content viewing and multi-platform adoption,” said CTAM President Char Beales. Other categories of broadband users and their percentages of the total were modern media mavens (13), trendsetters (9), on-the-go timeshifters (15), TV-seeking enthusiasts (14), TV-devoted online socializers (8), all-around traditionalists (7) and entertainment indifferents (17).
STANFORD, Calif. -- There’s a downside to the Obama administration’s approach to the Internet, said Alan Davidson, Google’s policy and government affairs director: “They will not be timid about regulating the Internet.” This reflects that the administration is “much more comfortable with regulation that its predecessors,” as a general matter, by ideology and because of the economy, he said Friday at a seminar on Legal Affairs in Digital Media. It was organized by Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, the Media Law Resource Center and Stanford Publishing Courses.
The FCC Disability Rights Office received 154 informal complaints in Q4 2008, the Consumer Bureau said in a report released Wednesday. There were 38 on telecom relay service, 30 on access, four on the provision of emergency information through video programming and two on hearing-aid compatibility.
Sales at Disney in the three months ended March 28 fell 7 percent from a year earlier to $8.1 billion, the media company said. Net income fell 46 percent to $613 million. Broadcasting revenue fell 2 percent to $1.4 billion, while cable network sales gained 4 percent to $2.2 billion. Broadcast operating income fell 38 percent to $162 million, while cable operating income grew 5 percent to $1.1 billion. Lower ad sales at ABC’s TV station group and higher programming costs at the ABC TV network led to the downturn in income, Disney said. At ESPN, Disney said it sold fewer ads than it did a year earlier but at higher rates.
The technology industry fears President Barack Obama’s international tax reform proposal cracking down on overseas tax havens could hurt U.S. tech companies. The administration said its proposal could raise over $190 billion over the next decade, and characterized the proposal as a first step in broader tax reform. An initial look at the proposal drew little reaction from the telecom or satellite industries.