Amazon is offering select Amazon Prime customers a free 30-day trial of Fire TV, said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, who was offered the trial in an email Thursday. Amazon is shipping the box gratis and customers who choose not to keep the product may return it at no cost. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to our request for information. Greenfield noted in a blog post that 30-day free trials are commonplace in the software/premium content space, citing similar promos offered by HBO and Showtime. Netflix has a similar promotion for new customers. In the technology hardware world, though, they're less common, said Greenfield, and he sees Amazon’s offer as a way to stimulate sales of IP-based TVs. The shift toward IP-based, on-demand, ad-free TV is primed to “notably accelerate over the next two years,” Greenfield said. Not only will it be more challenging for content providers in the linear TV model to break successful new live TV shows as the reach of IP-streaming devices expands, “but convincing consumers to endure 20 minutes of untargeted commercials will be infinitely harder,” he told us. Citing Google’s Chromecast for $35, Roku’s efforts to build its software directly into TVs and Amazon’s becoming more aggressive with Fire TV marketing, “We wonder if a price-cut heading into the 2014 holiday season will occur to drive penetration even faster,” Greenfield said.
The Internet Security Alliance (ISA) praised the White House Friday for agreeing with federal agencies’ analyses that their existing regulatory authority and voluntary measures instituted through President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order are collectively enough to improve critical infrastructure sectors’ cybersecurity. “Especially when viewed in the context of the world-wide policy debate as to how to deal with the cyber threat, the Obama Administration’s understanding of cyber security is clearly the most sophisticated,” said ISA President Larry Clinton. Current adversaries “are too sophisticated and the technologies and threat vectors change too rapidly for the traditional regulatory model to cope with a dynamic issue like cyber security,” he said. “We need to be as creative as the attackers and find more dynamic mechanisms to answer the threat and finding a way to use the market is probably the best alternative.” The White House released reports Thursday from the Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services and Homeland Security departments on how their regulatory powers could be better aligned with the cybersecurity executive order. The executive order had mandated the three agencies submit those reports. The White House will continue to streamline and harmonize regulations, but these analyses mean “agencies with regulatory authority have determined that existing regulatory requirements, when complemented with strong voluntary partnerships, are capable of mitigating cyber risks to those systems,” said White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel in a blog post Thursday. “Over the next two years, these departments and agencies will jointly investigate and leverage opportunities to improve the efficiency, clarity, and coordination of existing regulations” (http://1.usa.gov/1tpPu2U).
A new Application Developers Alliance working group will aim to “develop best practices for transparent and secure collection, analysis, storage, sharing, and use of consumer data,” said an alliance release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1nvSRS9). Communications technology company Ericsson is chairing the group, and other members include AT&T, Google, Sprint and Yahoo, the alliance said. The group will also have a policy focus, trying to “shape global public policies that are balanced and protect innovative data use,” the alliance said. In a statement, Application Developers Alliance President Jon Potter said, “Developers are using data to build products that make us smarter, healthier and more efficient, but with these innovations comes the need to ensure data collection is transparent and secure."
NTIA’s transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and ICANN’s accountability review received the support of the Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms, in its final report (http://bit.ly/RUMkGB) released Tuesday. The panel was chaired by Toomas Ilves, president of Estonia, and included ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and Vint Cerf, Google chief Internet evangelist (CD Nov 19 p17). The panel supports “broad multistakeholder alliances” and “urgently needed sustainable funding and resource models” to develop Internet governance access and growth, it said. The panel also endorsed the principles in the multistakeholder document (http://bit.ly/1nLhMBC) produced at Internet governance conference NETmundial in Sao Paulo, Brazil (CD April 28 p13).
HBO programming is available on Amazon Prime Instant Video. U.S. users of the service can access a collection of popular HBO shows for unlimited streaming, Amazon said Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1j8f192). Programs available include The Sopranos, The Wire and True Blood, it said.
Pandora faces a “challenge” to make it as easy for listeners to access its service in cars as it is to access AM and FM radio there, Tim Westergren, the company’s founder, told a J.P. Morgan investor conference webcast from Boston Wednesday. Half of all radio listening is done in cars, so that’s an “enormous category for us,” he said. It would be ideal if listeners just had to press one button to hear Pandora in their cars, he said. “We're still a little ways away from that.” Users must now typically use a mobile phone to access Pandora in their cars, he said. In contrast, it’s almost as easy for listeners to access Pandora as traditional radio in their offices, he said. “At some point, we will be as easy to use in the car, and I'm pretty bullish about what’s going to happen then.” It won’t be a “quick transition,” he said. The “ultimate vision is a connected car” that, just as with AM or FM radio now, would play Pandora automatically when the car was turned back on if it had been the last thing playing when shut off, he said. That’s a “multiyear process,” he said. Pandora is also eyeing an expansion of its content offerings beyond music, he said. Talk radio including news, sports and weather makes up about 15 percent of broadcast radio now, and it “makes a lot of sense” for Pandora users to be able to have “personalized sports woven into” their listening options, he said. “It’s kind of a question of when, I think, not if” Pandora will offer that additional content, he said.
The market for “connected living” or the “ubiquitous connectivity” of video and data services in the home, work and public square is estimated to be $731.7 billion by 2020, said business consultant Frost & Sullivan in a news release Monday. “Cloud computing, big data, mobility and low cost sensors are driving the internet of things and connected industries,” said Frost & Sullivan’s Audrey William, head of information and communications technology research in New Zealand, in the release. “The internet of things is forcing transformation and innovation across the connected home, workplace and city,” he said. Of the $731.7 billion, “connected city” will contribute 54 percent or “an estimated market potential of $392.94 billion,” said the release. “Connected work” will make up 31 percent or $228.44 billion, it said. “Connected home” will be 15 percent or $111 billion, it said.
Net neutrality must encompass peering and interconnection, said Netflix Chief Financial Officer David Wells Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom Conference webcast from Boston. Well’s comments were a sharp break from the FCC’s position that peering and interconnection are not the same issue as net neutrality, but more like cousins. “If they are first cousins, they are a bit like 18th-century royalty cousins and might have a child along the way,” Wells said. Netflix has been “a little bit disappointed” in FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler’s position, Wells said. “I would say just in general our interest is in a definition of net neutrality that is inclusive of all things that matter towards the delivery and the ability to control that interconnection with the consumer as an ISP,” Wells said. Netflix is planning “substantial expansion” in Europe beyond the Nordic region, with new launches expected in the coming weeks, said Wells, declining to give details. Netflix will have a “meaningful” amount of original programming in international markets, but isn’t willing to pay what it costs to lock up global rights for a series, Wells said. Netflix so far has gotten a “small reaction” to its recent imposing of a $1 increase in monthly fees for new subscribers, Wells said. Revenue generated by the fee increase will be used to fund content and expand gross margins, Wells said.
The top 17 U.S. telcos and cable companies, with a combined 93 percent of the market, added almost 1.2 million net broadband subscribers during Q1, said Leichtman Research Group Tuesday. The 17 companies now have 85.5 million broadband subscribers, with 50.3 million at cable companies and 35.2 million at telcos, said the industry researcher. Top cable companies now have a 59 percent share of the broadband market, Leichtman said. The Q1 growth is best for that period over the past two years, but “if recent history is an indicator, however, gains will be slower over the next couple of quarters. In each of the past four years, net adds in the first quarter were greater than in the second and third quarters combined,” said firm President Bruce Leichtman in a news release (http://bit.ly/1oP9yMd).
"The report ... is a bit of an odd read,” said Direct Marketing Association Vice President-Government Affairs Rachel Thomas in a Wednesday night blog post response to an online advertising security report released Thursday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (http://bit.ly/1lHA1b9). The report -- spurred by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the subject of a subcommittee hearing Thursday -- “warns against ‘dangerous third parties,’ and ‘invasive cookies,’ and calls for ‘circuit breakers’ to protect consumers,” Thomas said. “It goes on to say that the online advertising industry is complex and hard to understand.” It’s a misleading portrayal, Thomas said. “Yikes. It’s as though the entire Internet -- that complicated series of tubes -- is devoid of self-regulation,” she said. “Good thing that reality is a much prettier picture.” Thomas highlighted the benefits of Digital Advertising Alliance’s self-regulatory program, about which Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., was skeptical in Thursday’s hearing. “The DAA program has expanded to cover the collection and use of Multi-Site Data across non-Affiliate sites over time, as well as to provide guidance for data collection in mobile environments,” she said. “Unlike legislation, which is static and runs the risk of codifying practices that may become out-of-date even before a bill turns into law, industry self-regulation is nimble by its very nature and thus better suited to provide protections in cutting-edge, fast-evolving areas like online advertising.” DAA Executive Director Lou Mastria testified at the hearing about the program. Thomas said other senators, including Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., expressed support during the hearing for this industry-led approach to combating malicious online advertising.