Blog articles from 07/2011

More Q&A with a reporter, this time covering smart TVs and connected game consoles: What are your estimates for the total worldwide sales for all major consoles? Kurt: We expect sales of the major consoles to remain fairly steady over a five-year period – from 40.7 million units in 2011 to 45.1 million units in 2015. Do you have stats on the total adoption of XBLA, PSN and Wii network worldwide (or in the US)? Kurt: The last Xbox LIVE subscriber count I...

You couldn't go a few minutes at the CONNECTIONS™ conference last week without hearing the buzz phrases: Multi-platform Companion devices Cloud Advertising Another one that was bantered about was social networking integration - using the power and scale of Facebook to build deeper relationships between media companies and their audiences as well as the use of social networking as a way for media companies to guide consumers to the content that...

With Facebook Video Calling powered by Skype and Google+'s Hangouts feature, is video chat poised for huge growth? I got some questions from a reporter yesterday on this, so I thought I'd share the Q&A: We've had video chat for quite awhile, both at the high end (videoconferencing) and on mobile (the iPad). However, video chat currently seems to be mainly a niche service - it really played out well in 2010 when Europe was covered by a cloud of volcanic ash ....

Thanks to TVersity and PacketVideo for their sponsorship of CONNECTIONS™, and for having folks on hand to demonstrate their media aggregation software solutions. The basic premise is that all content, no matter where it's hosted, can be accessed when the companies' client software is installed on your different media servers. Although that is a fancy term, it's basically any computer that stores your personal or professional content.  In addition to providing for a...

Viodi View has a really good interview with David Foote, the CTO of Hitachi Communications Technologies America. We appreciate them being there, and the interview struck me as one key component in the "smart TV" space that doesn't get talked about enough. Operators will want to have a very flexible platform to which applications developers can create features and easily port them onto existing CPE and other consumer electronics in the home is essential,...

MobileBeat 2011 - VentureBeat's 4th annual flagship conference on the future of mobile - on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The conference will explore this year's hottest macro trend: the arrival of true mobile computing. Learn firsthand what the major players from within these sectors are doing to leverage 4G. Friends of Parks Associates click here and use discount code "VB-Parks" to get 20% off! Recently confirmed speakers: • Keith Rabois,...

Verizon wireless is getting rid of its unlimited data plan for new smartphone customers. Their plan is to offer limited data plans that will give users between two and ten gigabytes of data each month. The current unlimited data plan on Verizon Wireless costs existing users $30 per month, and 95 percent of their subscribers use less than two gigabytes per month. Verizon Wireless customers who already have an unlimited data plan can keep it, but existing customers who want to...

A quick scan of Best Buy’s Website reveals 333 flat-panel TVs available. Of those, 123 are considered Smart TVs (BB’s new term for Internet-connectable). So, 37% of their available TVs are “Smart.” Our forecast for 2011 is that 42% of all flat-panel TV sales will be Internet-connectable. Pretty good validation.