Docomo says The two devices, available only in Japan, are the first to kick off a new phase for Disney Mobile, as it partners with Docomo on a “Disney Mobile on docomo” venture.
But it appears that Disney Mobile will also continue to work with Softbank: the two announced their own two Android devices in October 2011.
In both the cases of the Softbank and docomo devices, it looks like Disney Mobile has gone down the forked OS route, as so many other device makers in Asia have before it.
In the two new devices launched today, gone is the Android Market, which has been replaced by Docomo’s own dmarket. Mickey and other Disney iconography figures strongly throughout, from the clock and other icons on the homescreen to prioritized links through to Disney mobile content. The services also put Docomo’s mobile payment service, Osaifu-Keitai, front and center.
The content element is particularly eye-catching part of this deal: Docomo says that those who take the devices will get free access to movie services, live wallpapers, puzzles, games and other Disney entertainment. By “free” that means the content itself comes without a charge; users still have to pay for data usage.
Still, you do have to wonder if we will see more brands trying to do something like this in the future as the cost of making customised smartphones becomes even cheaper.
Other benefits include offers for Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, both of which are already sponsored by Docomo.
Given how consumer-friendly this all looks, it’s surprising that Docomo is launching the devices with pretty clunky names. One device, the F-08D, will go on sale February 17; the equally-catchy P-05D will debut in March. Perhaps those names will change to different brands by the time their debuts roll around.
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]]>China Telecom will be starting a new mobile service as an MVNO in partnership with Everything Everywhere, the joint venture between France Telecom’s Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile in the UK. That means that while China Telecom will operate the service, including all customer and billing management, it will be doing so on network infrastucture owned by the two UK operators.
According to the FT, this will be only the beginning: China Telecom’s subsidiary China Telecom Europe is understood to also be looking to launch similar services in France and Germany; and is also looking for a similar MVNO launch in the U.S., where it already has a deal for business customers with AT&T (NYSE: T)—although in wireless the two work on different networks.
For Everything Everywhere, the deal is another signal of how the JV is looking to beef up its wholesale offerings at a time when the UK retail market remains competitive: In October Everything Everywhere reported that it had 27.5 million customers, a decline of 1.4 percent on the year before but still representing a growth in revenues and the more lucrative contract subscriber base. The operator now has 24 MVNOs on its network.
The China Telecom MVNO, due to launch sometime in Q1 2012, will very much play on China Telecom’s brand recognition among Chinese living and visiting the UK, who will be the first target customers for the service. China Telecom is China’s biggest fixed-line operator, with just under 170 million subscribers, as of November 2011. In mobile it reported 123.4 million subscribers, making it the third largest behind China Mobile and China Unicom, but still among the very biggest in the world.
With that in mind, the idea of targeting only Chinese residents and visitors in the UK and the rest of Europe makes this a small-scale venture—almost too small for a company the likes of China Telecom. There are only an estimated two million Chinese living in Europe, with 600,000 of them in the UK. My guess: given the much larger scale that China Telecom normally works at, it’s likely that if this MNVO takes off, we might see a broader offering and marketing effort for the service.
It will be worth seeing how China Telecom faces up to the MVNO challenge. There are plenty out there already that are thriving, but they do so on a very low cost base because the margins can be very slim. Those MVNOs that have tried to enter the market with a costly splash—remember Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Helio?—have not fared as well.
China’s mobile market has thrived around new services related to mobile content, particularly since many use their phones rather than PCs to access the web. It will be worth watching how and if this comes into play, too—or whether this will simply be about cheap calls back home.
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]]>FilmOn says it will be offering the content in partnership with XOS Digital, a company that provides digital asset management services to college sports organizations. It already offers its own sports on-demand service, XOS Sports, in which it offers paid rentals and full downloads of college games.
FilmOn’s channels, already live, offer viewers live games as well as archived fixtures. Users also have the option of recording programs to watch later either over TV, Internet or mobile devices using iOS or Android apps, or to subscribe to HD versions of the channels for a monthly fee. FilmOn offers a combination of free channels and those that require a subscription to watch.
It’s not clear just how extensive FilmOn’s coverage of NCAA fixtures will be—will it include the championships and all divisions?—or how FilmOn’s services work in conjunction with other rights deals between the NCAA and other media outlets: ESPN (NYSE: DIS), for example, extended its rights for NCAA Basketball in the U.S. and internationally earlier this month. That deal included both broadcast and streaming rights.
We have contacted FilmOn for further clarification and will update this post as we learn more.
At the very least, the equal content offering seems to be something that FilmOn is trying to exploit for its own marketing purposes: “We are going head to head with the industry’s top sports programmers,” the company’s outspoken founder Alki David boasts in the news release announcing the deal.
Frankfurt-based, UK/Beverly Hills-operated FilmOn has steadily been building up its catalog of premium sports content: earlier this year the company launched an international soccer channel with the UK Premiership and the Football Association, which will kick off (pun!) with football games from the Russian Premier League.
Last year, it came under some controversy when it was accused by the four major broadcasters in the U.S. of violating copyright by showing their programs. It was served at the time with a temporary restraining order. It then fought back against CBS and CNET with suits of its own (later dropped “put on hold” until November, David tells us.)
Orange says the Xbox service will include 30 channels via the Xbox live platform, including its on-demand and premium channels that it offers through its Orange TV service. It will be available initially only in France. Meanwhile, the Dailymotion service will see Orange launching a new, free 3D channel on the Dailymotion platform. That will be available everywhere, although the content is all in French.
The Xbox service will include the ability for those who have Kinect for Xbox to use voice and gesture controls with Orange’s TV service—perhaps the biggest way that this differs from the other ways you can already access Orange TV via set-top boxes, connected TVs and the Internet.
While there have been a lot of 3D services and devices launched in the last year or so, it remains to be seen whether this is a gimmicky add-on that comes and goes, or whether consumers really have the appetite for such products. The Kinect enablement, however, is a keeper: the technology has provided a huge boost for Microsoft in the past year and it’s likely we will see more competing TV services entering the market in the year ahead.
For that reason, Microsoft has been busily ramping up its own Xbox/Kinect TV offerings: not only is it enabling TV services itself, but it is signing up IPTV providers, in addition to Orange, to the service—most notably, Verizon and Microsoft have announced that FiOS will also be on the platform.
Gaming consoles are a good channel for pay-TV providers to keep tapping: a survey from Nielsen yesterday revealed that video is already a very popular use of these consoles. In the U.S., 14 percent of Xbox 360 time, 15 percent of PS3 time and 33 percent of Wii time is being spent on video viewing, watching channels like Hulu, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and ESPN.
And IPTV providers really need all the help they can get: they launched services relatively late compared to other pay-TV products from satellite and cable providers, in addition to all the OTT competition. Pyramid Research forecasts that IPTV will be installed in only one percent of all broadband enabled homes worldwide by 2012.
Of course, the Xbox service will also give Microsoft a boost in marketing its consoles in the French market, where France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) is the IPTV leader and will be selling the console in its stores as part of the deal. It looks like it is the only IPTV provider in the market to team up with Microsoft exclusively for the Xbox/Kinect service, at least for now.
Meanwhile, the Dailymotion channel shows how Orange is also using the OTT route to market its own services, and possibly grow its traffic there as well.
The service includes what looks like a selection of content from the carrier’s existing paid 3D channel—which incidentally is also available via the Xbox service. It includes Mag3D, a 30-minute 3D gadget program, as well as some TV and film content. It will also be featuring user-generated content: Dailymotion users have the option of designating their videos as 3D for them to appear in the channel.
As this line-up is designated as “for launch”, there is a chance we’ll see Orange launching more, and possibly paid, services on the channel. It already notes that it will have a mobile version of the service available by February 2012.
Orange, which is a 49-percent owner of Dailymotion, has used the investment to further its business reach online before, including an advertising deal announced earlier this year.
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]]>The latest date is 2013, the latest market is Hong Kong. And, this time, the company itself is making bold on-the-record plans…
]]>The latest date is 2013, the latest market is Hong Kong. And, this time, the company itself is making bold on-the-record plans…
“Disney (NYSE: DIS) is worth around $60 billion. That is our goal and there is no reason why we could not build a company that size,” Rovio marketer Peter Vesterbacka tells business paper Tekniikka&Talous in Rovio’s native Finland.
Rovio’s parallels with Disney are clear. Each has a very popular franchise in Angry Birds and Mickey Mouse respectively; Rovio is creative the interactive-age version of pioneering cartoon entertainment. But the differences are obvious, too…
Now the game-maker finds itself essentially a single-franchise company, churning out update upon update and new products like plush toys of the pigs and birds.
The amount of interest consumers have left in Angry Birds will be a critical factor in the timing of Rovio’s IPO ambition, which has now been pushed farther back and which the company had previously said would take place on Wall Street.
Vesterbacka tells Tekniikka&Talous Rovio is planning five or six new games based on Angry Birds characters in 2012. But Walt Disney might have seen fit to develop new animations with entirely new characters, at the same time as growing the core franchise.
It would be surprising at this point if the money Rovio is making can’t support new developments. But this may be why it is seeking a floatation fundraising.
]]>Neither Facebook nor Gowalla have confirmed this news directly at this point. We have reached out to both companies and will update this post as we learn more.
Update: A spokesperson from Gowalla has told us that the company does not comment on rumors or speculation, and would not confirm one way or the other the truth of the CNN report.
Update 2: AllThingsD has obtained a note from Josh Williams, the founder of the company, telling investors that the “ink on the deal is not dry” and that the situation is in a holding pattern. But not a denial of the actual deal taking place.
[original post continues below]
The deal comes on the same day that we learned of another bit of Facebook mobile news: the company has hired a new head of mobile developer relations, James Pearce, who had been in a similar role at Sencha.
CNN is reporting that the deal (value undisclosed) is of the “acqhire” nature: most of Gowalla’s employees, who are currently based in Austin, will join Facebook in Palo Alto to work on Facebook’s Timeline feature, launched earlier this year at its f8 conference.
However, if this deal is actually happening, there could be more to this than just a talent acquisition. Given Gowalla’s emphasis on photos for its check-ins, and its growing database of city-specific information about venues that its users visit, you can see how some of that could form the backbone for further mobile services launched (or integrated) by Facebook into its own network. That would omplement what Facebook already offers users (check-in places, local deals) and making more stickiness for its site for mobile users, and for those on PCs checking up on what their more mobile friends are doing.
However, it is not clear whether Gowalla would remain as a standalone service after a would-be acquisition from Facebook. The company has a strong track record of closing down startups, and ingesting what it needs and wants from them for its own projects.
Gowalla held a lot of promise when it first launched in 2009 by Josh Williams (pictured), who remains head of the company, but ultimately it lost some steam among a sea of location-sharing apps. So what started as more of a check-in service that competed with Foursquare was relaunched in August 2011 with a pared-down set of features based around the idea of location sharing and travel guides.
As for revenue drivers, there have been some deals for “badges” to promote certain places—for example a deal with Disney (NYSE: DIS) for its amusement parks—but it’s unclear whether Gowalla has had enough people using these services to make that marketing angle work as a business. A deal with Facebook, if it is true, could give the basic concept behind Gowalla a significantly bigger audience—or let the engineers who created it add some of that sparkle to Facebook. And then, who knows, it might just pop.
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]]>Miramax already had a deal to provide content for Netflix’s streaming service in the U.S. and Latin America, and it also has similar arrangements with Hulu and Starz.
Additionally, it has a substantial agreement with Facebook to offer full-length streamed films and free clips through a Facebook app called the Miramax eXperience. That was launched in August and covers several markets—including the U.S. and UK—and lets users buy Miramax films with Facebook credits.
The financial terms of today’s multi-year licensing deal between Miramax and Netflix were not disclosed. When Miramax announced its original U.S. deal with Netflix in May 2011—its first streaming agreement after getting sold off by Disney (NYSE: DIS)—it was reported to be worth $100 million.
Nor is it entirely clear what content will be included in the UK/Ireland deal, which will cover services via TV, tablets, games consoles, computers and mobile phones.
The original agreement provides hundreds of titles to customers in the U.S. and Latin America. In today’s announcement the two mention the availability of several films from the company’s back-catalog, including “Pulp Fiction,” “Chicago,” “Cold Mountain,” “The English Patient,” “Good Will Hunting,” “The Aviator,” “Bad Santa,” “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “Chocolat,” “Finding Neverland,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Hours,” “Kate & Leopold,” “Rounders,” “Sling Blade,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and several of the “Scary Movie,” “Scream” and “Hellraiser” films.
More on exclusivity. While Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) and MGM have signed a pact with Netflix to give the streaming company an exclusive window for its UK and Ireland service, Miramax has chosen to go on a more open route. That’s actually in keeping with the company’s policy up to now: When Mike Lang was appointed the company’s CEO in December 2010, he told paidContent, “We’re at the precipice of working with everybody. We’re going to do it all.” One reason is that by staying non-exclusive, it lets Miramax add more scale into its streaming operation.
He also pointed out at the time, though, that Miramax might change its tune if the matter of equity came up: “If Netflix would have been nice enough to offer me equity I might be exclusive,” he noted.
In the absence of that equity deal, the door stays open for other UK streaming services like Lovefilm and Sky Movies to compete more evenly against Netflix, at least where Miramax titles are concerned.
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]]>Apple announced the moves Monday after the close of the stock market. Levinson has been a co-lead director at Apple since 2005, the company said in a press release. But in the past, that often meant deferring to Jobs’ will for the company he ran with an iron fist. Now under CEO Tim Cook, Apple’s board could be poised to grow a little more assertive over certain aspects of the company’s strategy and direction.
Iger is no stranger to Apple, of course, having orchestrated the purchase of Jobs’ Pixar movie studio by Disney and partnering with the company on several product launches over the years. He’s also the chairman of Disney. Iger will become chairman of Disney next year when current chairman John Pepper is scheduled to step down at the company’s annual meeting in March.
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]]>Technologies like Twitter have changed the way that the television business thinks about live event programming, said Morgan Wandell, executive producer for ABC (NYSE: DIS) Studios. “There’s a social phenomenon around television driving viewers to want to watch the shows live so they don’t miss things or have spoiler implications if they waited two days to watch the show.” He cited the X-Factor (U.S.) as an example: the show allowed viewers to vote for their favorite performer via Twitter direct message, and they saw 3,000 tweets a minute.
But this really only works for a few big shows, said Christy Tanner, general manager and executive vice president for TV Guide Digital: most people aren’t going to be disappointed if the next episode of Ice Road Truckers is spoiled by those watching it live. “What that means is we have a very challenging environment to create mass events that scale, particularly live mass events at scale,” she said.
Those types of events don’t come along very often and are tricky to pull off in the U.S., spread out across three time zones. But the unique nature of these events, often consumed with a mobile device in hand, allow advertisers to reach a bigger audience because they create complementary opportunities for advertising, said Steven Treinen, vice president of advertising sales and marketing solutions for Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) Digital Entertainment.
And they also present both a challenge and opportunity for those who can provide the most massive metrics as to how people are engaging with content on other devices and through media like Twitter, said Gregory Markel, founder and president of Infuse Creative.
“There is a massive amount of fraud in third-party advertising options for content owners,” Markel said. Companies like Google (NSDQ: GOOG), who has done a pretty good job eliminating fraud from their search advertising business, have a chance to capture more business in this space if they can draw viewers to things like Google TV and the newly launched YouTube Channels.
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]]>The agreement with Disney-ABC appears somewhat limited for now. It includes prior seasons of Grey’s Anatomy; all seasons of Lost; prior seasons of Phineas & Ferb; prior seasons of The Secret Life of the American Teenager; prior seasons of Marvel’s animated shows Spider-Man, X-Men Evolution, Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers and Iron Man: Extremis; all seasons of Greek; and all seasons of Felicity.
Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) also renewed its licensing agreement with Disney-ABC today, which includes more shows than Amazon’s deal—Desperate Housewives, Alias, Private Practice and Hannah Montana, for example.
Amazon Prime Instant Video’s most recent deal added around 1,000 PBS titles to its library, bringing the number of titles available for free streaming to about 12,000. In today’s announcement (release), Amazon’s director of video content acquisition Brad Beale said, “We’re working hard to add even more selection for Kindle Fire customers and Prime members leading up to the holidays, and expect to have nearly 13,000 titles available in Prime instant video by early next year.”
Amazon Prime Instant Video is available free to Amazon Prime members, who pay $79 a year for two-day shipping. Kindle Fire buyers will get 30 days of Amazon Prime for free, which Amazon hopes will get them hooked on free streaming video. Today’s announcement stresses the “300 compatible devices, including the new Kindle Fire” that can stream Prime Instant Video. In the company’s earnings call last week, CFO Tom Szkutak said customers “absolutely love” Prime Instant Video and that many are signing up for free 30-day Prime trials, then converting to paid memberships.
In addition to the deal with PBS, Amazon signed a deal with Fox (NSDQ: NWS) in September, and added 1,000 NBC Universal movies and 2,000 CBS episodes over the summer.
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]]>Considering that Club Penguin was one of the first, big social networks developed for the 6-14 year-old consumer segment—it started out back in 2005 and was acquired by Disney (NYSE: DIS) for $350 million in 2007, after it had picked up 12 million users—and given how popular smartphones are with younger people, it’s a surprise that it has taken so long for Disney to launch Club Penguin’s first mobile product.
But it doesn’t look like it will be the last. Robin Wyatt, head of marketing and distribution for Disney Online Studios, says that today’s launch of “Puffle Launch” is part of a broader strategy to launch more mobile games spun out of the online product.
“We are looking at different games that we can move into the app store,” she said.
That sounds like a turnaround: before, there were some signs that Club Penguin has lost its way: in May 2010, the company was reported to have missed its earnings targets, thereby missing its $350 million earnout. Then, this year, Disney forgot to re-register the domain name for the site, resulting in a temporary loss of the site.
The huge success of apps like Angry Birds and other games, as well as the many story-telling apps and other educational and entertainment content, has helped to make children very early adopters of smartphones. If anything, that looks like that popularity has made Disney especially conservative with this launch:
The app, which will be sold for $0.99, will be ad-free, just like the Club Penguin site itself. Unlike the site, there will be no virtual goods sold in the “Puffle Launch” app—at least at first. Virtual coins that users collect in the app can be transferred to be used in the online game.
Mainly, “Puffle Launch” will be banking on word-of-mouth marketing among an existing base of Puffle fans: Disney says that in the online edition of the game, some 20 million Puffles have already been adopted.
A recent report from Nielsen found that nearly 40 percent of social media users are accessing social media content from their mobile phones (compared to 97 percent via computer). It also found that social networking apps were the third-most used category of apps among smartphone users, with games the most popular.
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]]>Sussman, who joined DIMG from EA Mobile in January as SVP-publishing for Disney Games, is credited with building out its global publishing business. My understanding is he will narrow his focus to mobile at Zynga, where he will be working for David Ko. Zynga declined comment.
It’s a loss for Disney, which, like other mature businesses, can have trouble holding on to some execs in a hot start-up market. Even with the status of IPOs in doubt these days, the potential win plus the salary at a company like Zynga can be a big draw.
He’s the second DIMG exec to switch companies this week. Paul LaFontaine, a VP for global distribution at Playdom turned up as the new CEO of Sulake, succeeding Timo Soininen at the Finnish company that operates teen virtual world Habbo Hotel.
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]]>Many matches during the tournament, which runs September 9 to October 23, take place in UK early hours or during morning office hours.
That will limit the TV commercial potential of a competition that is already less impactful than soccer’s World Cup, for example.
And, for rugby viewers who would rather watch live than wait for ITV’s prime-time highlights transmissions, it could make out-of-home viewing and catch-up as important as throwing a sickie to stay home.
Meanwhile, ESPN (NYSE: DIS), which airs through ESPN Classic old RWC matches for which it has archive rights, will deploy ESPNScrum.com for this year’s effort…
With just a week to go, however, ITV.com’s Rugby World Cup site so far carries no IBM mentions, and the most prominent banner ads on ESPNScrum.com’s tournament section are for other ESPN properties. Update: ESPNScrum.com has now got Land Rover and ITV itself as sponsors.
]]>MobiTV has been around since 1999—well before the wave of smartphone and tablet-focused video entertainment from players ranging from Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Hulu, to Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). Starting out as a real-time TV streaming service for mobile handsets, it now offers VOD as well, and streams its services to smartphones, tablets, PCs and connected TVs.
Unlike Netflix, Hulu and the rest, MobiTV’s main business has been powering other companies’ mobile TV services. Current customers include all four major carriers in the U.S.—Verizon, AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) and T-Mobile, and it licenses content from major broadcasters including Disney (NYSE: DIS) and affiliated companies like ABC and ESPN; CBS (NYSE: CBS), Fox (NSDQ: NWS), MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) and NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA).
It may have a lot of partners potentially covering millions of users, but MobiTV has never given out any numbers on exactly how many people are using and paying for its services. It does note the volume of content going over its network: it currently delivers more than 220 channels, including over 75 live channels, and in 2010 delivered over 3,000 live events. Total mobile minutes streamed in 2010 was 1.4 billion, compared to 264 million minutes in 2007.
Revenues have steadily grown at the company. It made $37 million in the first six months of 2010, versus $31.5 million for H1 2010.
Risks and clouds. Although MobiTV’s revenues have been rising—and there has definitely been more attention on cloud-based video services of late—it has yet to make a profit as a company. Net losses are declining, but slowly: in the first half of 2011, MobiTV reported a net loss of $8 million, compared to $9.3 million in the first half of 2010.
The company says in its S-1 that it currently relies on three customers for most of its revenue: AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. “We depend on our key customers, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, for the substantial majority of our revenue. Sprint represented 56%, 69% and 54% of our revenue in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively,” it writes in the S-1 filing.
It also has preemptively combined the business it gets from AT&T and T-Mobile, which, combined, represented 24 percent, 17 percent and 24 percent of our revenue in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively, and 42 percent of revenue in the six months ended June 30, 2011.
Those big deals, though, look significantly less secure in the future—whether or not may depend on how many subscribers are actually using the service.
MobiTV notes that in September 2012, the terms of its deal with Sprint converts to a month to month basis. The T-Mobile agreement will automatically renew in December 2011 for a one-year term, but T-Mobile can cancel with a 30 days notice. The AT&T agreement expires in January 2013.
Given the emphasis on these three customers, it says, “If we are unable to renew our agreements with these customers on favorable terms, or at all, or if any of these customers were to terminate our agreement for any reason, our revenue would decline and our operating results and financial condition would be harmed. If any one of these Tier 1 customers chose not to continue to use our services, or limited its use of our services, or if it replaced our services with a service provided by another company or by the customer itself, it would be difficult or impossible for us to replace that revenue because there are a limited number of such Tier 1 customers.”
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that MobiTV is looking to diversify its activities with more operators abroad, as well as new products and potential acquisitions of adjacent companies.
Below is an interview we did with the CEO of MobiTV, Charlie Nooney, earlier this year on all things mobile television, in which he hints of the kinds of expansion that he hopes to do with the funds raised in an IPO.
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]]>Hulu Japan launches with programming from CBS (NYSE: CBS), NBCUniversal (NSDQ: CMCSA) International Television Distribution, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox (NSDQ: NWS), The Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) Company (Japan) featuring content from Disney/ABC Television Group and The Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) Disney, Fox and NBCU are equity owners in the online video portal.
But the launch version doesn’t offer Japanese programming. Hulu promises to rapidly add more programming, including Japanese-produced content and content from across Asia.
In the launch announcement, Hulu said it has an exclusive mobile marketing partnership NTT Docomo, Japan’s largest mobile carrier, but promised that Hulu Japan subscribers “will be able to use Hulu on any mobile carrier or internet service provider on supported devices” without a long-term contract or subscription commitment.
But there are some device gaps at the start, notably Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 and Blu-Ray players. The only connected TVs at launch are Panasonic Vieras; Sony Bravia is “coming soon” along with Blu-Ray players from Panasonic and Sony.
In the U.S., Hulu.com is free while the subscription service is known as “Hulu Plus.” Each is ad supported. Hulu calls its service “first of its kind” for Japan but also wanted it to stand out among the many entertainment options. Hulu Japan is more like streaming video rival Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) than Hulu U.S. in one respect: TV shows are previous seasons, not current. The slate of current and library shows includes the CSIs, 24, Bones, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Fringe, Grey’s Anatomy, and NCIS. The first month is free.
International head Johannes Larcher explained some of Hulu’s reasoning and its plans on the company blog:
As we’ve done in the U.S., we will rapidly and continually add content to the service. The content lineup will only become more robust over time, including the addition of Japanese-produced content and content from across the Asian region in the near term.
We are equally proud of the user experience that the Hulu team has built for Japanese entertainment fans. We are offering an intuitive and fully localized product available in both Japanese and English, with many of the popular Hulu features from the U.S. incorporated into the experience.
As for expansion, writes Larcher:
We are committed to the success of our efforts in Japan and future international markets. Hulu in Japan is 100% owned and operated, and our growing Japan team has been hard at work building and inventing in our new Tokyo office. We are in Japan for the long term, and excited to continue building our product for Japanese consumers.
As we celebrate the launch of Hulu in Japan, we are conscious that this is just the first of more markets outside of the U.S. for Hulu. We hope that you will stay tuned for more news regarding our journey around the world.
The long-anticipated international expansion comes as Hulu collects bids for a potential sale. While speculation mounted in the U.S. over the possible suitors, believed to include Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), among others, the Hulu team led by CEO Jason Kilar was in Tokyo to launch Hulu Japan. While the move could make Hulu more attractive by showing its potential, it’s also a major investment that will take time to pay off.
Hulu’s running a different pattern from competitor Netflix, which started its expansion by going north to Canada and goes south to Latin America this fall. The next stops are expected to be Spain and the UK in early 2012. Netflix is using the same template as it has for streaming in the U.S. at a cost that is very similar $8-$10 a month.
The emphasis on streaming and the international push for that side of its business led to a change in pricing that starts today as Netflix splits its DVD and streaming, requiring users to pay for each separately rather than a less expensive combined package. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Lovefilm is looking at ways to expand its own streaming service. So far, the only head-to-head competition is in the U.S., with Netlfix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Prime; the latter is included in a $79 annual site membership with shipping benefits, not marketed as a monthly service. Hulu Plus is the only one with current primetime programming.
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]]>Magnus Jern, the CEO of London-based Golden Gekko, which has developed around 400 apps for clients that include Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Coca Cola, says that when it comes to some markets like Europe, Foursquare has hardly made any headway.
He says that taken as a whole, in cases where check-in options have been added into apps his company has created, the ratio of those who have used Facebook to check into places versus Foursquare has been between 5-10:1.
That’s a number that has some backing from at least one research group: comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) noted in May 2011 that Facebook Places accounted for some 96.6 percent of all check-ins in the UK—a proportion that Jern says is reflected in other markets in Europe. (Covering, of course, only those who are actually interested enough to check-in.)
“Services like Foursquare’s and Gowalla’s are growing, but just not fast enough,” Jern tells mocoNews. He also points out that having to sign up for another new service can be a barrier, especially when so many people are already on Facebook.
Jern points out that while Facebook is incorporating the location-aware Places service into its general status updates, it is not removing the APIs for the service. His company will continue to use these in apps they develop.
If anything, Places appears to be growing in its functionality. One enhancement coming soon, says Jern, is a service that will let people track their Facebook friends’ movements, based on their location check-ins, not unlike the service Google (NSDQ: GOOG) offers in Latitude.
But while Facebook is expanding Places, there are some question marks over how easy it is for check-in startups to diversify into more areas.
Just yesterday, Gowalla’s CEO Josh Williams announced that his company was actually getting rid of some of the services it had added on to Gowalla’s original check-in product: included in the cull are Notes and Items. Items, he wrote, were used by less than half a percent of all of Gowalla’s users; Notes is likely to reappear in another form in the future.
The message here seems to be that it’s easier to be a big social network/search engine and incorporate check-in functionality, than it is to be a check-in company trying to do a lot more. That’s not to say it’s impossible or not happening elsewhere—but just that it might be more tricky.
Jern, for one, thinks that the real competition in check-ins will not be between Facebook and Foursquare/Gowalla, but with Google, which will increasingly link up services like Latitude to Google+ to make it more useful to people. “A lot of the conversations going on now with our clients is whether and when we should integrate Google+ into their apps,” he says.
Monetizing check-ins. But even if Facebook is dominating check-ins at the moment, it is not necessarily monetizing those actions as well as they could be.
One area where Facebook has not seen as much success among Golden Gekko’s clients is in its Deals offers. Jern notes that those business who do push discounts or offers to users tend to do this directly through their apps to “control the experience more.” It also means that they do not have to pay Facebook any commission fees to promote those deals, he notes.
Update: After posting this story, Facebook actually announced that it would close the Deals service—perhaps a signal that whatever turned some app publishers off from using Deals was a wider problem for the company in making it a viable business product. Full story on Deals here.
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]]>In another twist, films rented with Facebook credits can be watched on iPad through a browser-based player and on Google TV.
]]>In another twist, films rented with Facebook credits can be watched on iPad through a browser-based player and on Google TV.
Facebook users can rent the films for 30 Facebook credits, the equivalent of $3; the rental is active for 30 days but the viewing window is 48 hours once you start to watch.
Miramax classics available in all three of the launch sites include Chicago, Cold Mountain and Good Will Hunting. Titles limited to the U.S. for now because of rights issues include No Country for Old Men and Pulp Fiction. Spy Kids 4 premiered this weekend on the big screen; Spy Kids, the film that kicked off the popular franchise, can be seen on Facebook in all three. The current batch should be available through September; titles will cycle in and out depending on rights. (See the full list below.)
Full Miramax eXperience slideshow presentation available via PDF
Unlike single-movie (The Dark Knight) or single-franchise (Jackass) apps, for Miramax CEO Mike Lang, this is about Miramax as the umbrella brand for a wide variety of movies. Miramax already had an electronic-sell-thru deal with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and some streaming VOD with Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) when Filmyard Holdings acquired the library from Disney (NYSE: DIS) for $660 million late last year. Lang made a major subscription video on demand deal with Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) after he came in with the mission of exploiting the company’s assets, then followed that with Hulu.
Initially, Lang also considered a separate storefront for Miramax.com. He quickly shifted gears, explaining in an interview: “We wanted to fish where the fish are. We could have created the most robust Miramax.com in the world and other than my family members, who would be there?”
At the same time, he wanted to show that content could be distributed across devices and platforms, but without taking part in UltraViolet, the industry initiative some studios have embraced. Said Lang, “We believe over time as an industry we have to figure out a way to buy content digitally and use it interoperably across all devices.”
He also wanted a social element. The Miramax eXperience includes a game that allows people to cast friends in various roles of Miramax movies; as they play, they can unlock bonus content that’s not otherwise visible.
What Lang didn’t want to do was wait until it was perfect. “Launching on VOD in beta is the easiest way to launch. We
didn’t want to offer to much to buy yet. It’s going to take a lot of work on our end to get more interoperability. Part of it for me is the current model of content for digital doesn’t work. It’s a bad consumer proposition. Consumers aren’t sure how to use it and own it. It’s a very kludgy experience for them.”
Lang doesn’t dismiss the possibility of a pure iPad app with in-app sales.
Facebook’s Dan Rose is careful not play favorites with movie apps. “We’re talking to all the movie studios,” he said. But he appreciates the touches in the Miramax effort. “One of the things Miramax approached us about was the notion of being able to buy on Facebook and watch on other platforms,” said Rose, Facebook VP of Partnerships and Platform Marketing. “We can be the identity platform behind that type of experience.” Facebook sells the credits while Miramax handles the hosting costs. “We charge 30 percent for Facebook credits. When you redeem, we pass through 70 percent of that.”
Rose also is careful not to build up too many hopes about the potential of Facebook movie rentals as a business or Facebook as a video viewing destination. “It’s still early. These are experiments on the platform.” While Lang credits Rose’s team and Joanna Shields in the UK with helping them get the app to Facebook users, Rose stresses that the heavy lifting is done by the developers and the content partners.
The movies aren’t meant to be exclusive to Facebook but some are available on Netflix only as DVDs right now and I only found one—Spy Kids—as a rental in iTunes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of them show up as iTunes rentals now that Miramax is making them available that way. Titles will cycle through on Netflix and other services much the way they will in Facebook. Lang doesn’t plan to make everything available at once.
First Look: It’s still in beta but I was able to watch a couple of movies—the quirky Adventureland with pre-Social Network Jessie Eisenberg and Spy Kids, which seemed perfectly suited to the iPad—and play the game while it was in the Facebook sandbox.
The custom player from Ooyala isn’t fancy but it does the trick, delivering a quality video experience with barely a blip on the iPad. It has its limits. Don’t expect seamless syncing across devices or any syncing at all yet. The app knows you have the right to see a movie and that you have it in the queue, but it can’t tell where you were when you stopped watching it.
The number of titles will seem very small to some, especially in the UK or Europe where Miramax rights vary. Compared to single-movie apps, it’s an advance, but it can’t compare in number to subscription VOD or rental titles on other services. I missed a lot of these movies so saw several right away that would be worth watching. Others may shrug. Either way, it’s a start.
(What I couldn’t easily tell until the app went live was how much information it wants to use from Facebook. Permission include the now-usual “everything you’ve shared with everyone”—which I find hard enough sometimes—plus permission to e-mail, post to my wall, access to my profile info and access to my news feed. It probably makes sense given the various ways you might choose to interact with the app but it can feel a little daunting.)
Update: Lang blogged about the new app on the company’s blog after it went live, stressing plans to make Miramax titles available for rent and sale on every device no matter where a consumer is via the “cloud.”
U.S.: Adventureland, Chicago, Clerks, Cold Mountain, Extract, From Dusk Till Dawn, Gangs of NY, Gone Baby Gone, Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Kill Bill 2, No Country for Old Men, Pulp Fiction, Shall We Dance (2004), Sin City, Spy Kids, Swingers, The Switch, Trainspotting
U.K.: Chicago, Cold Mountain, From Dusk Till Dawn, Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Kill Bill 2, Shall We Dance (2004), Sin City, Spy Kids
Turkey: Adventureland, Chicago, Clerks, Cold Mountain, From Dusk Till Dawn,Gone Baby Gone, Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown, Spy Kids,Swingers
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]]>Although footytips is focused on the Australian market, it covers both domestic and international leagues. They include the Australian Football League, the country’s National Rugby League (the two most popular sports); and also the Rugby World Cup, the UK’s Premier football league, Australia’s A soccer league, the European Champions league, Aussie cricket, SuperRugby, NBL and the NFL.
The tipping activities on footytips involve groups of co-workers, family or friends coming together and making picks (or “tips”) about who will win various sporting competitions and competing to see who has the most correct tips.
They are not related in any direct way to betting—and a spokesperson tells us ESPN has no plans to introduce gambling—but what they do bring to the table is very sticky services, which are always attractive to online advertisers.
The spokesperson says that on average people visit the site more than five times each week, via computers and mobile devices. That’s compared to other tipping sites where users often simply submit the tips once a week. The spokesperson notes that offers “good value from an advertising standpoint.”
The acquisition will also include a number of mobile apps—10 in total—which have had nearly 750,000 downloads since launch, with one in three visits to footytips now being made via mobile.
In the near term, the deal is mainly about ESPN building out more localized services, in this instance in Australia and New Zealand. (We’ve seen local efforts in other markets, like the UK.)
Longer term, the spokesperson notes that ESPN will also use the route to introduce the local audience to other sports in the ESPN network; and it might export some of its Aussie social media services into other markets, too.
ExtraCorp currently employs 15 people, who all become part of the ESPN team in Australia.
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]]>This season, ESPN Goals will be free, the sportscaster told reporters last week. So how will it finance the project?
With betting.
Powered by Bet365, a “bet now” button will feature on the app’s live scores page. Bet365 will also get banner ads and pre-roll video ads around the goal clips. It’s all a sponsorship deal, rather than an ESPN betting service, however.
ESPN won’t say how many downloads ESPN Goals has achieved whilst payments were required, suggesting it wasn’t many. ESPN is moving the app from paid to free with sponsorship in order to reach scale.
“In its first season, ESPN Goals established a brand and built a base of UK football fans using the app, which has allowed us to demonstrate the unique value of mobile to advertisers and partners – both on its own and as a compliment to our television and web coverage of the Premier League,” ESPN tells paidContent. “As we continue to build ESPN’s presence in the UK we want to connect with as many football fans as possible, on all the screens they use. Being able to now offer ESPN Goals to fans for free will help us advance those aims.”
This will be the first season in which BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) customers can watch their Sky Sports and Sky Sports News channels, with live match coverage, on mobile and tablets with the Sky Go application.
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Many authors have been experimenting with e-singles recently. There are currently 76 Kindle Singles, as well as many more e-singles that, like Leonardo & Steve, aren’t part of the Kindle Singles program. (Authors can submit their works to be considered for inclusion as “Kindle Singles,” which are sold in a special section of Kindle store and are heavily promoted.) It’s too early to know whether the format will be profitable, but e-singles’ low prices move them into impulse-buy territory. For authors like Devlin—who would have gotten a one time fee for selling Leonardo & Steve as a magazine piece—there is a potential promise of a new ongoing revenue stream, in addition to the opportunity to experiment with a new medium.
“If Bloomsbury had sold the first serial rights to this piece, Keith would have gotten 90 percent of the revenue anyway because of the way those arrangements are structured,” says Ted Weinstein, Devlin’s literary agent. “And they’re not set up yet to be doing short-form stuff. So they were delighted to let us put in the effort and experiment.” The new e-book by Devlin, who is also the “Math Guy” on NPR, is bundled with the first chapter of his full-length book The Man of Numbers. Jonathan Kroberger, Devlin’s publicist at Bloomsbury, is using the e-single as an extra sales hook for that book. “The e-book will allow me to reach out to a more focused crowd—in this case, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) fans,” he said.
The project was a first for Weinstein, who wanted to keep his agent/author relationship with Devlin “clean” and was wary of blurring the lines between the roles of agent and publisher. In recent months, some literary agencies—The Waxman Agency and Ed Victor Ltd., for instance—have launched their own publishing arms to sell their clients’ e-books, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. When Dystel & Goderich recently announced its own slate of e-services, it had to answer some of those concerns on its blog, emphasizing that it had no interest in competing with publishers.
Weinstein took on the “nuts and bolts” role of publishing the e-book, carrying out tasks like hiring a copy editor, finding a cover designer and talking to e-book conversion firms, while Devlin is responsible for picking up those actual expenses. A traditional publisher, by contrast, would cover all those costs.
Leonardo & Steve is now available for $2.99 in the Kindle and Nook stores, and will be distributed to other e-bookstores—the iBookstore, Kobo, Diesel, etc.—via Smashwords within the next few days.
Weinstein, who represents nonfiction authors exclusively, thinks e-singles could be a major growth area for his clients. “I’m asking them, ‘While you think about your next big book,’” he says, “‘is there a 15,000 word-er that you could do in the meantime?’”
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