Management shake-ups abound:

• France Telecom: CEO Thierry Breton is rumoured to be leaving to be FinMin
• BT: BT Retail chief Pierre Danon will be CEO at Capgemini
• Walt Disney: News Corp President has a new contract, allowing him to switch over without much hassle to succees Michael Eisner as CEO

The music industry turned to a new strategy in combatting the P2P downloading industry: P2P downloading!

Recent strategies include:

• partnering with firms ranging from Apple (iTunes) to Wal-Mart, offering legal download sites
• suing thousands of individuals in John Doe cases
• uploading corrupted files to P2P sites
• the ‘Inducing Infringement of Copyrights’ Act (anyone who induces others to reproduce copyrighted material; investors, advisers, reviewers, nonprofits excluded), hasn't passed yet

Legal P2P download initiatives:

• Grokster teamed with Mercora in order to offer streaming 'radio', based on tracks at members' computers; pays royalties; is in talks with Sony BMG
• Wurld Media will launch 'Peer Impact' early 2005, a legal P2P site, will charge 99 cents/track
• BT and Blueprint (DRM software) supposedly have a similar idea
• Snocap provides technology and the Universal Music catalogue (150,000 tracks) for legal P2P file-sharing plans to Shawn Fanning (Napster founder) and Mashboxx (launches early 2005 and currently talks to Sony BMG as well)

This week grought a number of firms putting themselves up for sale:

• Movie firm Lions Gate Entertainment, worth up to $1.8bn
• Newspaper publisher Pulitzer, valued at $1.2bn

And several deals have closed, or will do so in the next few months:

• The Adelphia auction is still running
• The Grey-takeover by WPP was delayed
• Sony bought MGM
• Dow Jones acquired MarketWatch.com

So what does this mean?

• It pays to put yourself on the auction block!
• There may be more deals like the above, e.g. ones hinted at on ...http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?dist=mktw¶m=archive&siteid=mktw&guid=%7B7B22065F%2D74F6%2D4594%2D9700%2D6F978A4B261E%7D&garden=&minisite=">CBS MarketWatch.com!(registration required)

Versatel: pizza versus Big Brother

John de Mol's investment firm Talpa increased its holding of Versatel shares to just over 25%. John de Mol earned EUR 2bn selling Endemol, creator of the Big Brother hit tv reality series, to Telefonica.

Leopoldo Fernandez Pujals took an almost 25% share of Jazztel in September (through a capital increase) and assumed the Chairman title. Pujals made millions from his Telepizza firm.

Pujals designed a very ambitious growth plan for Jazztel, growing revenues fivefolf in three years time.

Leaves the question: will the Big Brother creator getr entangled in Versatel? The company by the way sees room for cooperation ...

IPTV: comparing Akimbo Systems and DaveTV
Internet-to-tv download systems
To be sure: other systems include TiVo/Netflix, Starz/RealNetworks, CinemaNow, Movielink, RipeTV, TimeshiftTV (Broadband Networks), MovieBeam (Disney), SBC/EchoStar, Verizon/DirecTV, Blockbuster.com, Microsoft Media Center, etc.

• Akimbo was launched in October, Dave is introduced November 15
• The Akimbo service requires a $230 box (80 GB hard drive), Dave's software is available for free download (Dave will introduce a box next year)
• Akimbo charges 10 $/mo (or $200 for lifetime) plus some premium channels and PpV, DaveTV only uses the PpV model
• Both services supply an EPG
• Akimbo is ad-free, Dave uses targeted ads
• As to content: Akimbo specifically targets niche content and signed up 60 providers so far, Dave also aims at the large video music market; in due course both aspire to offer regular Hollywood content; Akimbo has a trial with TBS for CNN, TCM, Cartoon Network, etc. content

IPTV

My next post will give a brief overview of the IPTV market from the
vendor perspective.

Communications Breakdown

TV-over-Wireless

After Texas Instruments' new HDTV chip and Qualcomm's $800m network initiative, Nokia announces a tv enabled handset for 2006. A trial in Berlin involved asking participators how much the service would be worth, and supposedly people are willing to pay an astounding 13 EUR/mo.
Currently trials are running in Helsinki and Oxford. The US will join, in cooperation with Crown Castle. Nokia wants to use the DVB-H standard.

TV-over-Wireless

After Texas Instruments' new HDTV chip and Qualcomm's $800m network initiative, Nokia announces a tv enabled handset for 2006. A trial in Berlin involved asking participators how much the service would be worth, and supposedly people are willing to pay an astounding 13 EUR/mo.
Currently trials are running in Helsinki and Oxford. The US will join, in cooperation with Crown Castle. Nokia wants to use the DVB-H standard.

Convergence and fiber divergence

At a Gartner conference Deutsche Telekom presented its view of protecting fixed network revenues: simply get everybody to subscribe to DSL. BT Group on the other hand gambles on convergence: fixed/mobile, mobile/WiFi.
In a different way, IT-services also provide for growth opportunities. This is an area where DT and BT agree. T-Systems and BT Global must show the way.

Obviously, BT is motivated by their sale of the Celnet mobile business.

A comparible issue is the fiber disagreement. Verizon is rapidly building FTTP, whereas SBC goes no further than FTTN. Verizon is willing to spin-off up to 25% of access lines in order to be more efficient about the fiber investments. BellSouth is critical and Sprint questions those investments altogether. Now NTT is stepping into the game and supposedly is ready to commit EUR 40bn through 2010 to upgrade 30m homes and businesses.

Obviously, Verizon and NTT are motivated by the fiercest of competitors, Comcast and Softbank (Yahoo BB).

Trends October 27 - November 2:

Telecoms:

• FTTH: intro video by Verizon per 05H1
• VDSL: Belgacom per 2 nov
• WiFi: discount tariffs at SBC (2 $/mo in bundle) and BT (1 GBP/mo for max 500 min, until year end, after that 5 GBP/mo)
• WiMAX: trial Colt
• TV-over-wireless: Qualcomm to build netwerk (‘MediaFLO USA’, 30 markets) for US cellular providers, $800m in 4-5 years, operational 2006
• Auctions 3G: Romania 2 bids (Orange, MobiFon), Croatia 13 parties interested (Tele2, Alcatel)
• P2T: intro by T-Mobile in Germany per 04Q4
• MVNO: Tele2 in Austria; Hema in Ned als enhandced service provider van KPN
• Mobile substitution: 11% of Dutch households is mobile-only (KPN)
• Convergence: wireless/WiFi en wireless/bluetooth (Bluephone) handsets by BT in 2005, DSL + WiFi from BT
• Share buy-backs: TeliaSonera in 05, KPN suspends
• IPO: Etisalat 50x oversubscribed; Marocco wants to float 15% of Maroc Telecom, subscription Nov 22 – Dec 3

Internet:

• Search: intro mobile search by Yahoo! (Google SMS is in beta); acq Keyhole by Google [to enhance Google Local?]
• Desktop search: Yahoo! prepares; Blinkx hires Mark Opzoomer as CEO (ex Yahoo!)
• Holiday sales US online (nov-dec): +19% to 21.6 bn by 86m residents (+18%) (JupiterResearch)
• IPO: eLong (range 11.5-13.5) price 14, open 22, close 14.18

Media:

• Muziek: iTunes ook in Eur; RIAA nog 750 ‘John Doe’ lawsuits (totaal >5k) + 213 tegen individuen
• E-books: all eBooks.com (eBooks.Mobile) met Nokia
• IPO: DreamWorks price 28, 812m, 1st trade 39.50, close 38.75