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Apple News Flash

TV commercials and a posting tonight on Apple’s website have confirmed the official arrival date for the much anticipated Apple iPhone will be June 29th. The date is a week or two later than rumored deadlines but still within the June time frame Apple promised its faithful. The TV spots, which will likely be on YouTube and other video sites by morning, featured some of the phones unique features and explicitly said “Coming June 29.”

The phones, which will be available in two models for $499 and $599, are arguably the most anticipated new consumer product of the decade. The faithful and the pundits are both vocally speculating whether the product will live up to the hype. Officially now, on June 29th, the jury will able to begin consideration of its verdict.

Late this week,Tivo (Nasdaq:TIVO), one of the pioneers in digital video recording, announced earnings for the quarter ended April 30th.  The Company beat analyst expectations and reported its first ever profitable quarter but the overall news was mixed.

Net income was $835k (or $0.01/share) over a loss of $10.7m (-0.13/share) for the same period last year. Analyst’s consensus expectations were for a loss of $0.02/share. Sales were up 6% to $60.4m. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.7 million, compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of ($6.9) million for the same period last year. Service revenues were $54.2 million, compared to $47.0 million. Service and technology revenues were $58.1 million, (compared with $55.0 million).

With subscription numbers, an important metric of performance for a company like Tivo, Tivo added 57,000 new subscribers but total subscriber numbers dropped 1.7% to 4.34m. TiVo-Owned subscriptions increased slightly to 1.7 million from 1.5 million for the same period last year.

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The news in the later part of this week was all about the music, but not the music you listen to … it was about the music you watch.  

In a series of announcements several companies made clear they were taking music videos playing online seriously.   Some of the major names grabbing the headlines included labels Warner Music and EMI, search giant Google, and of course, Apple, which these days is always within a whisper of another headline regarding consumer entertainment technology.

Here’s a recap of developments in three news flashes:

News Flash 1: Warner Music

Warner Music, one of the Big 4 record labels, made public plans launch its own online video site.    The planned site, which will be built in partnership with UK based Premium TV, will house the entire archive of Warner Music’s music video collection.  Multiple sites are planned with content organized by artist, label (there are many labels under the Warner Music umbrella) or genre.  Click to Read More

With news largely being thrown into the category of: what are they thinking? eBay has confirmed month long rumors by  announcing that it was buying Web 2.0, new media companyStumble Upon for $75m.  Despite the confusion, the logic of the deal may actually make sense. 

Stumble Upon, which was founded in Calgary, Canada in 2001 is something of a computer-automated web surfing tool married to a community of users.  Either through their website, or browser-integrated buttons, users can ask for a new page and then the website will redirect them (a “stumble”) towards something related.  The sites in the system, however, are not purely random.  Web Publishers, like Metue for example, can buy placements from Stumble Upon that insure a certain number of page views from Stumble Upon users per day; just another form of website marketing. 

It is that paid search component, along with a feature launched in April called “Stumble Thru” which is likely what attracted eBay. StumbleThru lets a user move through the pages of a specific site with the same semi-randomness of full internet stumbling. In other words, they can “stumble” through the listings of eBay auctions, or products at eBay property, Half.com

While the pricing of the deal will raise some eyebrows, and the value of Stumble Upon in the eBay product portfolio will puzzle some, the deal is not completely illogical, nor is the price.  eBay spends a tremendous amount of resources keeping its site and name well publicized around the web.   Stumble Upon will be an asset in those ongoing marketing efforts.

Here’s a breakdown in more detail:
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IMAGINE:  You open the fridge and you’re out of milk.  Rather than writing down a list, with your finger as a pen, you write the word “Milk” on a touch-sensitive area of our refrigerator.  An integrated computer recognizes the word and wirelessly it adds milk to an electronic grocery list on your computer.  Later, thanks to that list, Milk is delivered with your next online grocery order.  Or maybe, when in your car, you touch the paper thin screen on your dash and your Grocery List is available for review (because your car’s computer downloaded from your home PC, syncing lists you preset to make mobile).  Or maybe, the list is loaded to data on your mobile phone?

IMAGINE: You are watching TV.  You pick up a remote control to change the channel but instead of pushing buttons, a gyroscope in the remote recognizes the motions of your hand and translates those movements into actions on the screen.  Move your hand up, the channel goes up.  Move it left, the volume goes down.  And so on.  Imagine, touch a small screen on that remote, where the buttons should be,  and the movements of your finger act like a stylus to aid in navigation.  You can check your email overlaid over the commercial break in your favorite show.  You can look at the pictures a friend forwarded from a party last night.  …. Imagine. 

IMAGINE: Your alarm clock goes off in the morning playing music you preselected from your iTunes library.  You reach over to touch its screen (instead of slamming the snooze button).  On contact, the alarm goes off and the ten inch diagonal screen changes to show your email inbox, or an interface to iTunes…or your daily to do list.…imagine.

These kinds of dreams, and a whole lot more, aren’t far off from a technological standpoint. The gyroscopic motion-sensing technologies, for example, already exist commercially in the Nintendo Wii or in computer mice from Gyration.  The technology for ultra-thin displays has seen recent major developments and is being refined.  Touch screens are improving dramatically.  Even voice-based interaction is improving in leaps and bounds.

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CBS is serious about its online content.  That may not have been clear with last weeks confirmed purchase of news videolog Wallstrip, but with today’s announcement that they were buying UK based Internet radio company Last.fm it certainly is.

Now, in addition to a sizable investment in IPTV company Joost, and an active content distribution strategy of its own, CBS will add a community driven music network that has more than 15million users spread around more than 200 countries.

In announcing the deal, CBS CEO Les Moonves said “[Last’s] demographics play perfectly to CBS’s goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses.”  With Joost, Wallstrip and now Last.fm, CBS is clearly trying to build that audience quickly. 

To acquire Last.fm, CBS will pay $280m in cash.  The founders of Last, which was started in 2002, will continue to run Last.fm independently but they will almost certainly be exploring joint efforts with the CBS Radio Division.

In its overall content strategy, it almost seems that CBS is positioning itself to compete Click to Read More

Over the last few days Metue has posted speculation about a DRM-Free iTunes launch and what it might include. All signs pointed to it being imminent, and it in fact, was. iTunes Plus, Apple’s name for higher quality, digital rights management free music officially launched today. A full press release is available on Apple’s website.

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