02.20.08 - 01:59pm
The BBC iPlayer has been used to watch over 17 million programs, no small feat as it was launched less than two months ago on Christmas Day, 2007. The BBC iPlayer is a broadband TV service. The only other broadband TV services that are offered are for Mac and PC computers. The iPlayer is the first mobile TV service.
The much lauded player will soon be available for the iPhone and the Touch. The BBC will begin transcoding their shows into MPED-4-based H.264. They also have Adobe’s Flash system but are considering dropping it altogether for the higher compressed, higher quality streams of the H.264.
“We have seen good and consistent growth in the daily consumption of programming and it doesn’t look to be in any way plateauing,” said Ashley Highfield, the director of future media and technology at the BBC. Last week the number of shows watched reached over 500,000 in one day.
Category: iPhone | Tags: BBC, europe, iPhone, iPlayer | Be the First to Comment »
01.09.08 - 01:59pm
After numerous allegation against Apple, fines and upcoming lawsuits Apple has chosen to reduce the price of music downloads in the U.K. bringing an end to the European Commissions anti-trust investigation against Apple.
The U.K. was one of the few left out of standardized pricing that Apple had already set in Europe as a result of complaints from people traveling from country to country and getting different pricing wherever they went. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain currently have unified iTunes pricing. The U.K. however still had a .10 cent higher price per song, due to their use of the pound rather then the euro.
“This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing.”
Category: itunes | Tags: apple, europe, itunes, uk | Be the First to Comment »
12.12.07 - 02:07pm
It would appear that the iPhone and the iPod are the “hot” items for the holiday season in Europe as well as the U.S. ComScore, a digital market research firm, tracked the frequency of online searches in the U.K., France, and Germany and reported that combined the highest searched items were; #1 Nintendo Wii, #2 iPod, #3 Nintendo DS Lite, #4 Playstation PSP, #5 iPhone. The iPod nano was ranked at #7, giving Apple three of the top 10 products.
The iPod in the #2 position had a total of 3.5 million searches. The iPhone while taking #5 of the electrical gadgets was #1 in mobile phone searches with 707,000 weekly searches.
“We know that music players, game consoles, and mobile phones are very popular with consumers this year,” said Bob Ivins, comScore EVP of European Markets. “The interesting aspect of this study is identifying which products are generating the most consumer searches, which can provide retailers and manufacturers with important insight into the underlying consumer demand for each specific product.”
Category: iPhone, iPod | Tags: europe, iPhone, iPod | Be the First to Comment »
09.10.07 - 01:09pm
The Apple Expo is up and coming in Paris in just 15 short days. Rumors of who has the European contracts have been abounding for months. It is likely that the carriers will finally be revealed at the expo.
There are also many predictions that the European iPhone will be going 3G, with enhanced storage.
Leaked T-Mobile Germany ads announcing that the phone will be available November 12, shows the iPhone featuring UMTS/HSDPA 3G connectivity and boasting 16GB rather than 8GB of storage.Whether the ads are real or not are up in the air, but T-Mobile Germany has long been reported as the most likely carrier in Germany making the ads much more believable.
O2 is expected to retain the contract in the Uk and Orange in France, both of which have 3G networks.
Category: iPhone | Tags: 3g, europe, iPhone | Be the First to Comment »
07.12.07 - 11:57am
The iPhone has been hailed as innovative, the best web browser ever, beautiful! - yet the service for most, is less than spectacular.
Apple’s decision to go strictly with the AT&T network is definitely hurting. Bottom line, as good as the iPhone is the EDGE network is slo-o-ow.
It’s understandable why Apple would go with AT&T’s GSM network as this is the standard network across Europe. Verizon and Sprint use Qualcomm’s CDMA technology. Why they choose EDGE over 3G is another matter. Apple says it decided to go with EDGE because it would take more power to use 3G making the iPhone battery life shorter. However, since WI-FI (if you can find it the web on the iPhone is awesome), takes up a ton of power and this is the iPhone’s high speed option, the problem was probably more due to the fact that AT&T’s 3G coverage has huge gaps. (Too many customers to miss out on.)
Category: iPhone | Tags: 3g, apple, asia, at&t, edge-network, europe, iPhone, web_browser | Be the First to Comment »
07.05.07 - 01:39pm
The iPhone is proving to be everything competitors feared it would be - sleek, cool and selling like hotcakes. The frenzy here in the U.S. has made it even more in demand in Europe, a place used to being first in getting the newest and hottest items
on the market. It has still not been decided who will be the carriers for the iPhone in Europe but it does appear that there will be a different carrier for each region of Europe, or at least that’s what the rumors are.
Originally Apple was in talks with Vodafone, those talks however, appear to have fallen through. Carolina Milanesi, a telecoms analyst at Gartner said, “Although it would make a great deal of sense for Apple to go with Vodafone, it doesn’t really fit with Vodafone’s emphasis on their own music content and portal.”
Category: apple, iPhone | Tags: apple, carrier, europe, iPhone, o2, orange, t_mobile, vodafone | Be the First to Comment »
06.04.07 - 03:01pm
In an interview, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer told to a German magazine “we decided not to enter new markets so far” and will not do so until “after we have reached some of the goals outlined. When this will be the case, I cannot tell you today.”
Ballmer went on to say that the Zune was a business that was losing money and that to go into new markets would be dangerous.
While the Zune will apparently hit the 1 million mark this month, just in time for the June goal deadline, it is still 99 million units behind Apple’s iPod. Thus it is not exactly big news that the Zune has not quite become the “cash cow” that Microsoft has hoped it would be.
Zune product manager Cesar Menendez further clarified the situation, stating, “We will not expand the device family or our geographical footprint until we are positive that we can provide the best experience from the start.”
Category: Zune | Tags: 1_million, ceo_steve_ballmer, europe, german_magazine, Zune | Be the First to Comment »
05.14.07 - 03:37pm
Here in the U.S. the iPhone will be sold via Cingular or the “New” AT&T, however, with the U.S. release possibly less than a month away, it has still not been decided who will carry the iPhone in Europe, when it is released there in the fall.
Typically a cell phone is released and sold via multiple carriers allowing for mass market penetration. The iPhone is taking a different route selling, at least in the U.S., exclusively through Cingular. This means one must already be a Cingular customer or go though the sometimes painful and costly process of switching carriers and abolishing previous contracts.
Cingular is not available in Europe leaving Apple to find another source to carry the iPhone. Vodafone is currently the largest carrier in Europe with over 200 million subscribers, Spain’s Telefnica is number two. The German T-Mobile is number 3 overall with 101 million subscribers - less than half of what Vodafone has and yet it is T-Mobile that is reportedly the front runner in negotiations to carry the phone in Europe.
Category: iPhone | Tags: cingular, europe, iPhone, t-mobile, vodafone | Be the First to Comment »
04.30.07 - 02:21pm
Itunes has been around in the UK for almost three years, but while their different stores offer music they have not yet offered films, in spite of the fact that the U.S. has had them since September of 2006.
All that is finally about to change. According to Pascal Cagni, Vice President of Apple’s European division, iTunes will offer films in the UK by the end of the year.
Cagni did not offer any information on which studios will be offering their films.
Cagni also confirmed that the iPhone will also be released in the fourth quarter in Europe as well.
Category: itunes | Tags: europe, films, iPhone, itunes, uk | Be the First to Comment »
