Amazon has become “the most disruptive company in the media and technology industries,” suggests Wired.
Amazon’s rumored tablet has the potential to be the perfect machine to sell both digital goods delivered immediately or physical goods delivered in two days.
“Why not make an independent movie or television show and release it through Amazon?” asks the article. “Once the video is hosted on Amazon’s servers, it’s available for immediate digital download or streaming through Prime to desktops, tablets or set-top boxes. Both streaming and downloads promise a revenue share for content creators. Customers could buy a Blu-ray or DVD that Amazon burns and ships on demand — no storage, no overhead.”
While some of the content may not prove to be top quality, some of it could be the next Funny Or Die or Channel 101 while dramatically impacting distribution: “The breadth and independence of buying choices could easily differentiate Amazon from traditional studios — or even for those studios themselves, from competing services like Netflix.”
Amazon may also offer its forked Android-based OS as a platform to hardware partners providing a new platform with its own code, app and media stores, cloud services and revamped UI.
“In a year from now,” writes Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, “we could see a range of ‘Amazon tablets’ made by different hardware manufacturers.”
During his bleak forecast of the publishing industry at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, novelist Ewan Morrison suggested the rise of the e-book will mean the end of writers as a profession, as piracy and a demand for steep discounts take over the book industry as it has with music, newspapers, games, porn, photography, telecommunications and home video.
Publishers will no longer be able to provide advances to enable writers to make a decent living and writers will increasingly depend on the “long tail” which cannot support them. Morrison adds that only established writers will prosper.
In 10 to 15 years, he believes the largest “publishers” will be Google, Amazon and Apple.
“The writer will become an entrepreneur with a short shelf life, in a world without publishers or even shelves,” predicts Morrison.
Netflix walked away from another deal with Starz after that company insisted on a tiered-pricing model similar to what they would get with a cable channel. Netflix did not want to tamper with the simplicity of its monthly fee model.
Netflix had reportedly offered Starz more than $300 million per year to renew their agreement.
With the demise of the Starz deal, Netflix customers may feel that they are paying more and getting less. Still, Netflix counters that their Starz content accounts for only 5-6 percent of domestic viewing.
Netflix will be challenged by competitors like Hulu, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft XBox Live. Moreover, cable companies are increasingly offering similar access to video through TV Anywhere services.
Starz may either sell its content to a Netflix competitor or try and create its own streaming brand like HBO.
As the bidding war for Hulu continues, Financial Times reports that Yahoo, Amazon and Dish Network are all expected to offer near 2 billion dollars for the company, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.
However, Google is rumored to have proposed a significantly higher bid for an acquisition proposal on a larger scale. Details have not been released, but some speculate that Google may offer a couple billion dollars more in exchange for more content for a longer period of time. It is not clear if the Google proposal includes a longer deal for content or possibly something else — or if Hulu would even be interested in a new plan.
According to The Wall Street Journal: “Since that’s not what Hulu’s owners have put on the table, ‘normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that,’ says an executive familiar with the sales process. But Google ‘indicated that there’s enough money’ involved so that Hulu’s owners are at least thinking about continuing the discussion.
The video site would fit nicely with Google’s YouTube, which has struggled in landing the type of long-form premium content that Hulu owns. And if rumors are accurate, Google is willing to pay.
But would the content owners agree to terms with Google, which is already the largest video website worldwide, when they were earlier holdouts on Google TV?
Amazon is reportedly close to production on its long-rumored tablet device. TechCrunch provides a fascinating first-person report on the Android-based Kindle (but sorry, no pictures yet).
The device will initially feature a 7-inch color touchscreen with a 10-inch model coming next year. The interface is Amazon’s and the main screen resembles iTunes Cover Flow with a carousel of books, apps, movies. It is built on top of pre 2.2 Android. It will NOT be getting Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich.
It will be integrated with Amazon’s content store, which is one-click away. Apps will be available though Amazon’s Android App Store (and not Google’s Android Market). Additionally, the book reader is the Kindle app, the music player is Amazon’s Cloud Player and the movie player is Amazon’s Instant Video player. There is no camera.
The device is expected to include a free subscription to Amazon Prime, which will provide access to Amazon Instant Video.
TechCrunch anticipates an end of November launch at a cost of $250. There are many more details in the article…
Online video subscribers of Netflix and Amazon Prime paid almost $50 on average for video subscriptions during a recent six-month period.
According to new research from Parks Associates, subscribers spent less than half of that amount on a la carte video purchases.
The number of movie and TV show downloads declined 56 percent from 2009 to 2010, and movie rental downloads decreased 70 percent.
“Based on the reported usage of video download services by U.S. survey respondents in Q4, consumer spending on a la carte video during a six-month period ranged from $12 to $26,” reports Home Media Magazine. “Comparable spending on video services subscriptions during that same period reached at least $48 per household.”
“The all-you-can-eat-style subscription approach taken by Netflix has proven successful in the U.S. market,” Parks said in its report. “It has helped to drive up consumption — and spending — for online video.”
Netflix ended the most recent fiscal quarter with more than 25 million subscribers in North America.
Amazon’s tablet PC is widely expected to be ready for release this fall and, according to Forrester Research, will “completely disrupt the status quo.”
Forrester analysts predict the tablet will provide competition for Apple’s iPad and could sell as many as 5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The report suggests Amazon’s success will depend on pricing the device below $300 (paidContent points out that Amazon has yet to officially confirm it will even release a tablet).
Forrester believes an Amazon tablet will prove popular based on the company’s “willingness to sell hardware at a loss combined with the strength of its brand, content, cloud infrastructure, and commerce assets.”
If successful, an Amazon tablet could significantly boost the competitive profile of Google’s Android operating system.
A federal judge has ruled that online music services that host tracks in the cloud are not liable if that music has been acquired illegally by customers. ETCentric reported earlier this week that this may seem like a hollow victory for the record labels. However, a green light for online music locker services also provides some legal certainty for the likes of Apple, Google and Amazon.
“The judgement, by U.S. District Judge William Pauley, came in a case involving EMI and fourteen other record companies and music publishers, who had sued the service MP3tunes,” reports MacUser. “Judge Pauley explained that MP3tunes and its chief executive, Michael Robertson, had not breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in allowing downloads.”
“This is a huge victory. Users can still download songs from publicly available websites, and store them without a separate license fee, so long as MP3tunes complies with takedown notices,” says Greg Gulia, representing MP3tunes and Robertson.
This ruling should also come as good news to those companies investing in cloud-based music services. For example, Apple’s iTunes Match is due in the U.S. later this year. According to MacUser: “It will scan users’ iTunes libraries and allow them to access versions of tracks in their library, but not purchased from iTunes, online in iCloud. Tracks purchased in iTunes are automatically available to computers and mobile devices associated with an iTunes account. If no match is found, users will be able to upload the track themselves.”
As the monthly costs for pay TV have risen from $11.97 in 1986 to $49.70 this year, consumers are looking for inexpensive Web alternatives like Netflix and Amazon.com.
Three of the past five quarters have seen an overall decline in pay TV subscriptions, according to SNL Kagan.
“Barclays Capital analyst James Ratcliffe predicts that as young people who now rely on Internet-TV alternatives age, penetration of pay TV among occupied homes gradually will decline,” explains The Wall Street Journal. “He sees it dropping to 79 percent by 2018 from 89.5 percent now, although he predicts the pay TV industry won’t lose subscribers in an absolute sense until 2016.”
While a judge has ruled against MP3tunes and founder, Michael Robertson, for copyright infringement, the details of the ruling may provide online music locker businesses like those from Google and Amazon with a better legal foundation.
A key finding is that users, not MP3tunes, had the ability to determine which files were placed in their lockers.
Also, it was determined that DMCA does not require one to investigate potentially infringing activity without a specific complaint from copyright holders.
“The news is even better for Google and Amazon,” according to Ars Technica. “Those companies’ music locker services do not even offer the broad sideloading functionality that has caused Robertson legal headaches. So if Judge Pauley’s reasoning survives appeal, Google and Amazon will be on solid legal ground. Indeed, those companies may even want to start thinking about whether they’ve been too cautious. For example, they might save a lot of money by taking advantage of the deduplication part of the ruling.”
“In an upbeat and highly insightful essay on technology and innovation, pioneer Marc Andreessen outlines the ‘dramatic and broad technological shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy…'” comments ETCentric staffer Bob Lambert with this submission.
Andreessen notes HP’s announcement that it is “exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software” and Google’s plans to “buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility” as recent surprises in the tech world, yet also examples of what makes the pioneer “optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies.”
Andreessen suggests that Apple and Google are undervalued and we should avoid using the term “bubble” when analyzing the value of technologies. He writes: “…too much of the debate is still around financial valuation, as opposed to the underlying intrinsic value of the best of Silicon Valley’s new companies.”
“Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not,” Andreessen adds.
Andreessen’s essay offers a compelling take on the direction of the tech industry, its place in world economies and some of the challenges that lie ahead. He notes interesting examples including Amazon, Netflix, Pixar, Pandora, Skype and others.
“Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let’s seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what the broader consequences are for businesses and the economy and what we can collectively do to expand the number of innovative new software companies created in the U.S. and around the world,” he concludes. “That’s the big opportunity. I know where I’m putting my money.”
Andrew Losowsky, books editor for The Huffington Post, has released “Reading in Four Dimensions” (available as a 99-cent Kindle Single) — a fascinating essay on the future of publishing and how the Internet has impacted the reading experience.
Many of us are publishing in new ways via Facebook, Twitter, blogs and more. Readers are interacting with these “works” in a kind of social reading environment, which changes the way stories are written and read.
Physical books will get better, but there will be fewer of them. Books do not change like Web entries that become features and can travel with you like a time machine that catalogues the thinking of that time.
The TechCrunch post includes a video interview with Losowsky that addresses key points from his essay, including “how print brings permanence to digital publishing, how the concept of ‘publishing’ has translated online and the value of paper books in our increasingly digital world.”
HP unveiled a new 4G version of its TouchPad tablet on Amazon this week.
The tablet features a faster 1.5 Ghz processor, an updated webOS, 32GB of memory, 4G and Wi-Fi capabilities, and a 9.7-inch LED touchscreen.
It retails for $699 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com (although the listing does not include a release date).
According to PCMag: “Over the weekend, HP offered a $100 discount on the TouchPad, as did retailer Staples, allowing users to get as much as $200 off the tablet. It’s not clear if that was the original intent, however. Staples said rather cryptically that the coupons ‘were meant for different audiences,’ and did not respond to follow-up questions.”
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced the availability of Flixster Collections, a social movie portal that went into public beta this week.
The service, a revamped version of the Flixster product acquired earlier this year, encourages users to share what they’ve watched with friends.
If there’s something you want to see, for example, Flixster directs you back to Amazon, iTunes, Hulu and Netflix (as well as your hard drive, if you let it). There are also links for theatrical films, including reviews, trailers and ticketing services.
“You can also imagine how this will tie in to Ultraviolet, the cloud/locker system for video that Warner and a big coalition of movie studios and tech companies (except for Apple and Amazon) are pushing,” writes Peter Kafka in All Things D.
So far, Flixster Collections is available for PCs and Macs, but no mobile app yet.
Two new tablet devices aimed at children under the age of 10 will hit the market this month, providing parents with the option of no longer having to share their iPads.
Educational toy maker LeapFrog began accepting pre-orders last month for its new LeapPad (available August 15) — a $99, 5-inch device including 2GB of storage and a video recorder. Designed for 4- to 9-year-olds, the LeapPad features a touch screen and big buttons for little hands.
Additionally, Amazon is now taking pre-orders for a 7-inch Android-based touchpad called the Vinci, available later this month starting at $389. The Vinci tablet features a protective soft-cornered chassis, 512MB of RAM and a 3MP camera.
Neither tablet includes Wi-Fi functionality, so parents won’t need to be concerned regarding what their children might download.
