Tech & Telecom news — Jan 16, 2018
Guest Contribution
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Content: Video
Time Warner’s HBO is under pressure from Netflix, now a leading competitor for Hollywood top talent, after becoming the largest global spender in video content. As they’re not able to compete with money, they’re turning to more of a sentimental differentiation, promising stars they will treat them with much more love… (Story)
Content: E-Sports
Activision’s recently launched e-sports league for its “Overwatch” franchise, that they’re distributing through Amazon’s Twitch app, has had what the company views as a strong start for a new league, with up to 425,000 concurrent viewers in the first 3 matches. Not bad for a game with approx. 35m players globally (Story)
Games
Tencent has formed a “digital partnership” with Lego to develop games, videos and a social media network for Chinese children. Lego, trying to re-activate sales in China after a slowdown, is putting emphasis on the “safety” of the products, as pressure is mounting in China on negative effects of digital apps on children (Story)
Devices
We seem to be in the middle of a hype for voice-activated speakers, at least in the US market, where 1/6 of the population is now estimated to own one and where the activation rate for these devices is now outpacing that of smartphones and tablets. Amazon would have approx. 67% market share, with Google at 25% (Story)
HARDWARE ENABLERS
Network technology
New Street Research concludes that Verizon’s planned entry into 5G-based Fixed Wireless Broadband is only a “modest threat” to cable, after an estimation that they could get around 8m subscribers, or about 7% of the market, with an investment of approx. $35bn (!) that will also be useful for “mainstream” wireless 5G (Story)
Network startup Starry, which is already using a 5G-like technology to offer 200 Mbps Fixed BB wireless services at $50/month in Boston, plans to expand to 16 new markets this year. They claim to be accelerating now, after lots of effort to develop the right “window-unit” solution for homes to receive the signal (Story)
Network regulation
After months of negotiations, French regulator Arcep is requiring operators in the country to deploy approx. 5,000 new cell sites in the next 3 years, to improve coverage in specific areas. The target is to achieve ubiquitous 4G coverage across the whole country, and operators face sanctions if they don’t meet objectives (Story)
SOFTWARE ENABLERS
Artificial Intelligence
AI systems from Alibaba and Microsoft won a reading comprehension test organised by Stanford last week, outperforming humans by a few basis points in accuracy. This shows how AI is progressing in more “human-like” tasks, and also how the US and China are involved in an AI-research “arms race” at the moment (Story)
Virtual Assistants
They may have had record sales these holidays, and they may have been the stars at the CES show last week, but Virtual Assistants still have an issue beyond the hype, because people still don’t know exactly what to use them for, beyond a sporadic interaction like the one they have with the “old clock/radio in the bedroom” (Story)
VENTURE CAPITAL
DowJones has published its quarterly analysis of Venture Capital activities in Europe, and it seems that the European VC industry had a strong recovery this year, with regional startups raising $17.52bn this year, +27% vs. 2016 (when there was a hard slowdown in activity). Top 5 deals in 4Q17 were done by UK companies (Story)
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Tech & Telecom news — Jan 16, 2018 was originally published in Tech / Telecom News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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