Last week was a big week for consumer electronic companies, as they announced a whole slew of products at Macworld and CES. In this post, we take a look at some of the announcements, events, and statistics from various technology and media companies.
Apple: At Macworld, Apple announced that songs from the iTunes store will be DRM-free. Since Apple occasionally mentions the number of songs sold via the iTunes store, it will be interesting to track this announcement’s impact on sales. Furthermore, Apple also announced that it will be allowing users to purchase and download songs via the iPhone over the 3G network.
ABC – Ann Sweeney: Ann Sweeney, the President of the Disney-ABC Television Group presented on January 8, 2009 at CES. During the speech, new media was defined as a platform that connects consumers with popular content. Specifically, Sweeney mentioned that Apple’s devices, including the iPhone and iPod touch are helping new distribution methods, given their ease of use. Other points of interest from her speech include:
- Collaboration: Technology manufacturers, advertisers, and content creators must come together to produce not only great content, but also create technologies that distribute this content such that it benefits the viewers and advertisers.
- Interactive content: Good Morning America and Lost are two strong brands that can drive interactivity in various ways, which allows users to more intimately connect to the content.
- Statistics: ABC.com’s video player has delivered over 1/2 billion streams and 1 billion ads.
Revision3: Online content network, Revision3 was at live-broadcasting multiple shows at CES, including TekZilla, HackCollege, and Hak5. This represents a shift in digital media coverage over the past few months. Users are often used to live-blogs and real time status updates. However, well-produced live video over the internet is rare.
NBC: While NBC didn’t have any major announcement at either show, NBC Universal was posting content on their site NBCUATCES.com.
Palm Pre: Surprising and impressing it’s investors, Palm announced the Palm Pre, a mobile phone that vastly differs from it’s predecessors. While it’s a cell phone, it’s important to note that it’s form factor makes it easier for consumers to view video or watch multimedia content on the device. As the device is released, it’ll be interesting to see if Palm is able to regain market share from other competitors in the highly populated smart-phone space. CNN: Of surprising note was CNN’s coverage of CES. As of January 11, 2009, a vast majority of CNN’s tech videos were dominated by CES 2009 coverage. CNN has been long known as a traditional news source. However, it is also one of the most advanced news networks, with a vast presence on Twitter, Facebook, online video, and it’s iReport platform.
