Comcast is “really sorry” about outages caused by “technical issues” during its upgrading of the X1 platform, the company said in a blog post Friday. Affected customers will receive credits within the next two weeks, Comcast said. The issue was caused by the software that updates the X1 platform, Comcast said. “Our engineers are now going back over this issue and taking extra steps to prevent it from happening again,” said the post. “The fix we’ve put in place should be automatic -- customers don’t need to do anything (such as rebooting or unplugging the box)."
The Internet of Things market is expected to grow from $1.3 trillion in 2013 to $3.04 trillion in 2020, said International Data Corp. in a Friday news release. As this market, defined as a network of identifiable endpoints communicating through connectivity, continues to emerge, a variety of vendor strategies and key players will emerge to meet customers' needs as well as grow "new revenue streams from this net new market opportunity,” IDC said. In this market, vendors, service providers and systems integrators “must co-exist and integrate products and solutions to realize success,” IDC said. IDC's findings were released in its Worldwide and Regional Internet of Things Forecast Update, it said.
Consumer demand for wearable technology is "rising fast," with Q3 global shipments totaling 12.7 million units, up 40 percent from the year-ago quarter, Futuresource Consulting said in a report. The outlook for full-year 2014 is for shipments to grow 32 percent to 52 million units across "all wearable categories this year," the firm said. "Q4 is where we're going to see all the action, with annual sales heavily weighted towards the pre-Christmas period." The firm expects 39 percent of the year’s commerce in wearables to be concentrated in Q4, "as wearable tech provides an appealing gifting option for consumers," it said. For 2015, "we're anticipating further acceleration in the pace of growth," as smart watches become more widely adopted, with a 44 percent growth rate driving the market to 74 million units shipped next year, it said. "The brand landscape continues to be dominated by fitness companies, due to the relative size of the fitness market within wearables," it said. "Fitbit has effectively consolidated its significant lead in activity trackers, despite the entrance of larger CE competitors. Samsung comfortably leads in the nascent smart watch market and Garmin retains a strong lead in the traditional fitness category." The Apple Watch will have "a significant impact upon the connected watch market with its entry in 2015," it said. "Longer-term growth is dependent upon how compelling a use case emerges for existing wearable products. While we have an optimistic view of the wearable market, there remain some uncertainties around the usage models for wearables, and whether a compelling raison d'étre for the category will develop."
Aereo is cutting staff in its Boston and New York offices, Vice President-Communications and Government Relations Virginia Lam emailed us Thursday. “We are continuing to conserve resources while we chart our path,” Lam said. “This was a difficult, but necessary step in order to preserve the company.” In a letter to the company's Boston employees obtained by website Betaboston, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said the company has been unable to obtain outside investments since the recent nationwide injunction was granted against it by U.S. District Court in Manhattan Judge Alison Nathan. Lam said the company is looking for a way to continue. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and other commission officials have recently mentioned Aereo extensively in connection with a draft NPRM on classifying linear over-the-top video services as multichannel video programming distributors. The broadcasters' case against Aereo in New York has yet to be tried on the merits, and would likely continue in some form even if Aereo were to go out of business, Fletcher Heald attorneys Harry Cole and Kevin Goldberg told us. Though not involved in the case, Cole and Goldberg follow it for the firm's blog. Though broadcasters could pursue their case even if Aereo were to go out of business, the sort of default judgments that likely would occur with a defunct defendant are unlikely to further the broadcasters' legal agenda, said Cole and Goldberg. Fletcher Heald represents broadcasters, though not in any cases involving Aereo. Lam declined to comment further on the scope of the layoffs.
Clarification: The one-year period Derek Khanna, a fellow at New America Foundation’s X-Lab, described as Congress having to pass a copyright bill is because he thinks it's unlikely it would pass in 2016 during the next election season (see 1411050048). Khanna was speaking on his own behalf.
Average household bandwidth requirements will increase 31 percent annually over the next five years, a Ciena study said. The study, released Wednesday and done by ACG Research, provides information to help network planners model the impact of residential households’ increasing use of broadband and subscription video services across varied devices on specific network scenarios, Ciena said in a . Internet video use, including smart TVs, is expected to grow from 12 percent of overall peak average bandwidth in 2014 to 25 percent in 2018, it said. It will be the largest contributor to household bandwidth consumption by 2018, said Ciena. It said use of 4K streaming video services will grow from 2 percent in 2014 to 12 percent in 2018.
IBM projects that online holiday sales will increase 15 percent over the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, compared with last year, the company said Wednesday in its annual holiday forecast report. The biggest increase in online sales is expected on Cyber Monday, when sales will grow 15.8 percent, followed closely by Thanksgiving with a projected increase of 15.6 percent, it said. It sees Black Friday online sales growing 13 percent "as consumers find the best deals with their fingers as well as their feet," it said. IBM based its predictions "on historical and real-time trend data analyzed across hundreds of U.S. retail websites," it said. Now in its seventh year of holiday reporting, IBM tracks more than 370 performance indicators, and "helps retailers and marketers benchmark themselves against industry peers while driving more targeted customer engagements," it said. Other IBM projections: (1) For the first time ever, more than half of all online shopping on Thanksgiving, roughly 53 percent, will come from a mobile device, up by 23 percentage points year-over-year. (2) Smartphones will continue to lead in mobile browsing over the five-day shopping period, accounting for 29 percent of all online traffic vs. 15 percent for tablets. However, IBM predicts tablets will account for twice as many mobile purchases as smartphones due to their larger screen size.
Liberty Media Corp. completed the spinoff of Liberty Broadband. Liberty Media and Liberty Broadband are now separate publicly traded companies, Liberty Media said Tuesday night in a news release.
Overall U.S. spending on home entertainment content fell 1.2 percent in Q3 to $3.92 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said Wednesday. That was "flat" compared with Q3 a year earlier, evidence of the industry’s "ongoing stability," the DEG said. But the Q3 decline followed a relatively healthy 2.1 percent increase in spending in Q2 (see 1408060045). Blu-ray penetration is now approaching 80 million U.S. homes, the DEG said, though sellthrough spending on all packaged goods, including DVD and Blu-ray, fell 8 percent in Q3 to $1.3 billion. Overall spending on electronic sellthrough was Q3's biggest star on a percentage-increase basis, rising 26.7 percent to $347 million and 33.2 percent for 2014's first nine months to $1.02 billion, the DEG said.
Ijenko launched its IoE2 platform at European Utility Week 2014 in Paris Wednesday with a goal of bridging the Internet of Energy with the Internet of Things. IoE2 enables smart home service providers to deliver augmented consumer experiences by leveraging multiple smart home and device ecosystems, Ijenko said. The platform will enable energy and communications service providers to deliver value in their ecosystems, create a unified customer experience and grow upstream business through “increased consumer stickiness” and services, it said. Ijenko is demonstrating use cases for IoE2 with devices from D-Link, Hue, LG’s smart watch group, Nest and Xbox One Kinect, it said.