SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple said it’s releasing an iPhone 3G S with voice control and video recording June 19 for $199 with 16 GB of RAM and $299 with 32 GB, with a two-year AT&T service contract. The price of the current 8 GB 3G model was cut to $99. “There’s never been a good smartphone in the market at that price,” Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of product marketing, said at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference. CEO Steve Jobs, due back to work this month after a medical leave, didn’t make an appearance -- at what historically had been the annual setting for some of his much-watched announcements -- as it had been speculated he might.
Many questions remain about what form their final plan will take following a meeting Thursday sponsored by APCO and eight other public safety organizations on the future of the 700 MHz D-block. The groups said in a news release that they agreed to petition Congress to reallocate the D-block, creating a single 20 MHz block of broadband spectrum for use by public safety. They also agreed on the need for “sustainable funding for the operations of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust,” which is expected to play a big role in any plan. Among key questions is where the money would come from to pay for a network and what role the PSST will play.
Sony Ericsson said it will ship early in Q4 the Aino mobile phone that PS3 owners can use for access to media content by means of the console’s Remote Play feature. Consumers in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the U.K. will also be able to access PS3’s PlayTV service using the Aino. The feature will allow those consumers to watch, pause and record live TV, Sony Ericsson said. Another new Sony Ericsson mobile phone, the Yari, introduced a “games carousel” that it said will allow users to access all games from the device’s desktop and browse downloadable content on the PlayNow arena, it said.
Sony Computer Entertainment America added 10 HD movies to its online PlayStation Store for download to PS3 consoles, including the recent action movie Taken and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, the company said Friday. Outlander was last week’s top HD movie download, it said. SCEA also launched a DC Comics channel on the PlayStation Network, including animated movies based on DC Comics super heroes. Separately, Sony Ericsson said it will ship early in Q4 the Aino mobile phone that PS3 owners can use for access to media content by means of the console’s Remote Play feature. Consumers in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the U.K. will also be able to access PS3’s PlayTV service using the Aino. The feature will allow those consumers to watch, pause and record live TV, Sony Ericsson said. Another new Sony Ericsson mobile phone, the Yari, will ship at the same time, featuring “gesture gaming technology” that allows users to control games by hand and body movement rather than pressing buttons, it said. Yari will be “the industry’s first mobile phone with gesture gaming outside of the Japanese market,” said Catherine Cherry, market business manager at Sony Ericsson. The phone will ship with motion and standard games on it, the company said. Yari also introduced a “games carousel” that it said will allow users to access all games from the device’s desktop and browse downloadable content on the PlayNow arena, it said. In other PS3 news, SCEA said it added six best-selling titles to the Greatest Hits library for the console. Starting June 16, the prices of the six games will be cut to $29.99 as they are re-released with new Greatest Hits packaging: Army of Two and Battlefield: Bad Company from Electronic Arts, Capcom’s Devil May Cry 4, Sony’s Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. It’s the second set of PS3 games to reach “Greatest Hits” status.
Entrepreneurs may not be able to secure venture capital if the FCC doesn’t write clear rules for net neutrality, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told the Computer and Communications Industry Association’s Washington caucus Wednesday. One of two “high-tech defenders” on the Hill named in the association’s newly released tech scorecard, Wyden warned of “storm clouds ahead” for innovative new businesses. That’s due to the “lack of clear, enforceable standards” on neutrality, “and I don’t think the country can afford that in these difficult times,” he said, noting Oregon has the second highest unemployment among states. Wyden also urged telecom executives to be prepared to explain the local benefits of free trade to an increasingly hostile American public.
Entrepreneurs may not be able to secure venture capital if the FCC doesn’t write clear rules for net neutrality, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told the Computer and Communications Industry Association’s Washington caucus Wednesday. One of two “high-tech defenders” on the Hill named in the association’s newly released tech scorecard, Wyden warned of “storm clouds ahead” for innovative new businesses. That’s due to the “lack of clear, enforceable standards” on neutrality, “and I don’t think the country can afford that in these difficult times,” he said, noting Oregon has the second highest unemployment among states. Wyden also urged telecom executives to be prepared to explain the local benefits of free trade to an increasingly hostile American public.
More than a million U.K. households now get HDTV through BSkyB and account for more than 10 percent of its 9.3 million subscribers, it said. Its Sky+HD service more than doubled the number of subscribers as of the Q3 ended March 31, to 1,022,000 compared with 465,000 in the year-ago period. Sky+HD homes grew by 243,000 in the first three months of 2009. The growth coincided with introduction of a new HD set- top priced at 49 pounds ($75), BSkyB said, conceding that the box costs it about $150 when the expense of manufacturing, installation and added customer-service personnel are tallied. Growth of the HD service also reflects falling prices for HDTVs and HD-ready displays in the U.K., BSkyB said. The set- top’s hard drive lets viewers pause and rewind live TV, record an entire TV series at the touch of a button, and record two programs at the same time. About 400 hours of HD programming is available daily on 33 channels, comprising movies, sports, and regular and specialty TV shows. BSkyB lately has been positioning its HD service for future 3-D broadcasts, with an ongoing series of experiments (CED April 7 p1). In Q3, BSkyB’s profit was 3 million pounds compared with year-earlier loss of 6 million pounds. Revenue rose 12 percent to 1.4 billion pounds in the quarter.
People watching full episodes of NBC shows online at NBC.com will have more control over the ads they see through new tools to be introduced on the site, the network said. It announced a series of changes to the way it delivers ads on those videos. Viewers will be able to select the ads they see, and when during programs. In some cases they will be able to watch a longer ad before the program, then watch the show uninterrupted. Ads will also appear when viewers pause the video. New ad formats such as a push-back unit what appears under the clip within the video, a rail ad that will surround the video player and a new pop-out player will also be introduced. “It is possible to give our users a rewarding entertainment experience and provide our advertisers with an effective marketing environment,” said Vivi Zigler, president of NBC Universal Digital Entertainment.
People watching full episodes of NBC shows online at NBC.com will have more control over the ads they see through new tools to be introduced on the site, the network said. It announced a series of changes to the way it delivers ads on those videos. Viewers will be able to select the ads they see, and when during programs. In some cases they will be able to watch a longer ad before the program, then watch the show uninterrupted. Ads will also appear when viewers pause the video. New ad formats such as a push-back unit what appears under the clip within the video, a rail ad that will surround the video player and a new pop-out player will also be introduced. “It is possible to give our users a rewarding entertainment experience and provide our advertisers with an effective marketing environment,” said Vivi Zigler, president of NBC Universal Digital Entertainment.
Targeted ads and the ability to watch video on demand using a wide array of devices for cable subscribers (CD March 24 p12) is nearer to reality as operators settle on non- proprietary standards and vendors work together on new products, executives told us. Interactive TV for the sake of keeping cable subscribers has partly been supplanted by using addressable advertising to underwrite the costs of providing increasing amounts of VoD content for free, they said. Analysts and executives expect targeted ads, and especially the Canoe venture of six operators, to be a focus of the NCTA show Wednesday through Friday in Washington.