Topics

886

Smart Connected Devices / Why Amazon Plans Premium Ad-Supported VOD ?

« on: December 07, 2014, 06:23:49 PM »

Computing Giant, Amazon is planning to expand its video offering by launching a standalone ad-supported VOD service early next year. Given this divergence from the traditional fee based revenue model (Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu etc.), Amazon would be making two substantial assumptions: 1) ad dollars will continue to shift to digital; and 2) consumers will be accepting of advertisements in longer-form ?TV-style? content online.

How Ad Supported Model Helps Dramas / Comedy, etc ?
Digital pure-play publishers are seeing some encouraging trends for ad-supported models. Over the last year, the ?TV-Style? content categories of Scripted Drama, Comedy/Variety, and Documentary/Reality have grown ad view share by approximately 900bps to 28%. Stats suggests that consumers are not likely to view advertisements as a deterrent to ?TV-Style? content, which is encouraging for the ad-supported VOD model. Advertisers would also likely be supportive of this model considering that ad completion rates tend to be the highest for content that is greater than 20 minutes

887

Technology / Infosys 3.0 & Design Thinking

« on: December 07, 2014, 05:17:36 PM »

Infosys has created Infosys Information Platform (IIP) to deliver big data solutions across industries based on IIP and design thinking. This has been launched on leading Open Source components and partner products to deliver enterprise-class data foundation at dramatic price performance improvement. IIP to evolve into Infosys Platform (IP) on open platform across services and clients. Management believes Big data & analytics is a huge opportunity on open source software.

Design thinking (DT) to be proactively pursued to identify problems / issues faced by clients and offering solutions from end-user perspective thus enabling businesses / clients to embrace new areas. ~8.2K employees have been trained on DT (incl. 160+ senior personnel). 3 clients have completed workshops on DT and 25+ are in pipeline.

888

SmartPhones & Apps / Tencent Partners Warner Bros, HBO and FOX

« on: December 01, 2014, 02:46:35 PM »

During the recent Tencent Video Summit, the group officially announced plans to enter into strategic partnerships with Warner Bros, HBO and FOX, aiming to become the exclusive online broadcasting platform of various U.S. TV series and National Geographic Channel programming in China. Domestically, Tencent Video again obtained the exclusive online broadcasting rights to The Voice of China, which will be in its fourth season. Tencent Video seeks to continue exclusive coverage of a wide range of hit series in 2015 through the above-mentioned range of investments and partnerships, as well as other types of content acquisition.

Tencent also seeks to offer a broader array of live music as part of its 2015 strategy. Tencent Video seeks to deliver 50 online concerts in 2015. Another key investment area will be in-house production in TV dramas according to the platform. The Tencent Video app on iOS platform has climbed to the #8 spot in the free genre in China, from being #13 a few days ago

889

5G / Wi-Fi / Reliance TRUE UNLIMITED 999 Broadband

« on: November 27, 2014, 11:04:42 PM »

Ahead of Reliance Jio Infocomm's 4G LTE Nationwide Launch, Airtel and Reliance Communication have entered into Wireless Data War.

Airtel dropped 4G LTE Prices yesterday and Today Reliance Communications' EVDO Wireless broadband has announced the Drop in prices.

Reliance EVDO True UNLIMITED 999 Plan Details
No limit on GBs and no hidden / extra charges
Next-Generation Pro 3 network offers data speeds of up to 14.7 Mbps
Available on Mobile or USB Dongle too

There is NO fair usage clause, policy or any hidden charges. Like the name of the product says, it is a 'True Unlimited Plan', regardless of the amount of usage.


Currently available in in Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune and will be expanded to other cities very son.

890

4G / LTE / Airtel 4G rates Lower than 3G

« on: November 27, 2014, 11:01:57 PM »

Airtel has drastically dropped 4G LTE Prices to match with 3G Pricing and for the High End Rs 999 Plan, the company is offering 10GB High Speed Data which is cheaper than 3G.

For 10GB of High Speed Broadband Download using 3G Network, Airtel consumers currently pay Rs 1,499.

Who will be the next one to jump into the price war ahead of Reliance Jio's soft Launch a Month from now on Dec-28 coinciding with the Founder's Birth Anniversary ?

891

SmartPhones & Apps / Apple AppStore Downloads Rise

« on: November 27, 2014, 09:01:59 PM »

The daily downloads of iOS Top 200 apps in the US rose to 7.8m in Oct (+39% YoY/+42% MoM), mainly driven by the launch of iPhone 6/6+ and the iOS 8 upgrade.

The average customer acquisition cost declined to US$2.16 in Oct from US$2.25 in Sep. Advertising costs for apps however remain high due on persistently intense industry competition. Cost per install rose to US$1.46 (+59% MoM) on iOS. The Android platform, on the other hand, only saw a US$1.15 (+1% MoM) cost per install in Oct. Loyal customers on Android however showed better growth momentum. Average spending on apps rose to US$0.1 (+28% MoM) in 3Q14. Android had a market share of 83.6% vs iOS at 12.3% in 3Q14 globally.

Chinese iphone app store offer
Total iOS distributions in China have also likely been driven by strong demand for the iPhone 6/6+, as well as series of promotions on iOS. Apple recently launched a short term promotion across many of the apps on its platform, charging only RMB1 per download in China, an initiative which surely must have driven download volumes across many apps. Daily downloads of VVebo on the first day of the promotion, for instance, grew to be 150x higher than normal days.

892

3G / HSPA / EVDO / Airtel to Expand 3G Footprint - Akhil Gupta

« on: November 26, 2014, 10:22:31 AM »

Mr. Akhil Gupta, Chairman of Bharti Infratel was positive on data, claiming it will be a second telecom revolution, with towers a proxy for this growth.

Data consumption is growing 100% yoy but significant growth potential remains ? 40k of 140k total BTS (for Bharti) are for 3G & only 20% of its subs are currently using data.

2G coverage is complete but 3G has only just started (focus is on top 4-5 cities in each circle) and LTE has yet to be rolled out. US$30bn has been invested by telcos since 2010 on spectrum; will be primarily used for data. Further, this spectrum on average is on a wider band vs voice.

893

Web 2.0 / China auto e-commerce players' Singles Day Sales

« on: November 25, 2014, 11:38:49 AM »

With the close of China's Double 11 (or Singles Day) promotional campaigns, Autohome, Bitauto and Tmall released results from their respective auto e- commerce events. Autohome announced that it had received 37,000 orders on Nov. 11th (+108% YoY over 17,770 orders achieved during the 2013 event.) Vehicle transaction value totaled ~Rmb6b.

We note that this year, some 2,488 vehicles were fully paid for online, this in addition to the traditional discount coupon sales model - a trial to test China consumers' willingness to pay online for such a high ticket item.

Bitauto completed 63,000 orders with 26,000 on its two main e-commerce platforms: Huimaiche.com and 37,000 from Bita Mall. The number of orders recorded by Tmall amounted to 50,700 (vs 10,700 in 2013, +373% YoY). This year Tmall cooperated with Sina Weibo and Sina Auto to promote the campaign.

894

Technology / Advertisers Move to Digital / Programmatic Bidding

« on: November 21, 2014, 01:16:21 PM »

Programmatic buying has taken the digital advertising world by storm and with many brands and advertisers late to the game, 2015 could be a breakthrough year for programmatic. Accompanying this adoption is the growing desire for transparency in the programmatic buying process, cost-cutting, as well as the desire to leverage firstparty data. The result has been many brands establishing or planning to establish in-house teams to run campaigns via self-serve platforms.

With over 60% of the market either new to the game (18 months or less) or not yet using programmatic advertising (but planning to use it), the growth potential for programmatic in 2015 appears promising. The other key theme that may shape programmatic advertising in 2015 is the growing trend of establishing inhouse buying teams.

Given these two trends, we believe covered companies likely to benefit are FUEL, TUBE, AOL and to a lesser extent, YUME, which is rolling out a programmatic offering in 2015.

895

3G / HSPA / EVDO / Idea BalanceSheet Strong to Win 900MHz Spectrum

« on: November 21, 2014, 12:50:34 PM »

Mr. Akshaya Moondra, CFO and Mr. Arpit Gupta, IR said that Idea Cellular has the balance sheet strength and sufficient headroom (in terms of leverage) to retain at least 4.4MHz of 900Mhz spectrum in the upcoming spectrum auctions. The company highlighted that it is well positioned to benefit from 1) strong data volume growth, given operators other than the 'top 3 operators' lack the ability and/or willingness to invest in network 2) better cost efficiencies driven by scale economies and 3) reduced competitive intensity driving voice RPM and operating leverage.

SmartPhones / mobile offers the only gateway for mass-market customers to access the internet in India (~92% of Indians that have access to internet is via mobile). Management commented that data is EBITDA margin accretive given 1) no interconnect costs and 2) most of data related costs flow below EBITDA. Data is likely to be a key growth driver for the company

896

Web 2.0 / Dot Com Valuation Craze

« on: November 21, 2014, 09:35:15 AM »

Analysts Upgrade InfoEdge India due to Dot com Valuation Craze,

The recent deal in housing.com values the portal at about US$250 mn. 99acres has 3X the traffic share of housing.com, which would imply a valuation closer to US$700 mn. Given the dearth of details of the valuation of housing.com, we have been cautious in assigning a 30% discount to this value. We therefore value 99acres.com at about US$550 mn or `250 per share for Info Edge

Unconfirmed media reports say that Zomato raised US$ 60 mn, implying a value US$600-US650 mn. Info Edge has invested US$30 mn in this round, maintaining its 50% shareholding. Assuming a 20% discount to the cited transaction value, Zomato would contribute `130 per share to Info Edge

897

Web 2.0 / Size of china Online Advertising

« on: November 20, 2014, 11:35:01 AM »

China online advertising market totaled RMB42.22bn in 3Q2014, for growth of 37.9% YoY and 10.9% QoQ, representing a slight slowdown compared to the previous quarter (+48.7% YoY and +29.2% QoQ).

Major factors driving growth were: 1) Search engine-based advertising, which ramped up steadily with a growing share being mobile search, 2) Verticalsites, which seem to have grabbed share from China's portals 3) online video sites, which greatly benefited from popular TV shows and sports matches.

Negative factors included: 1) a weak real estate market, which served to depress spend in this area as ads spending from China's developers kept declining, 2) conservative spending patterns across the e-commerce industry.

In terms of format, search engine maintained a dominant position both on PC and mobile (driven by growing online marketing demand by China's SMEs), representing 34.1% of total share.

898

SmartPhones & Apps / Innovators Behind Rise of Xiamoi Mobile Internet Company

« on: November 19, 2014, 12:48:40 PM »

Xiaomi is a leading smart device manufacturer and mobile internet company in China. Founded in April 2010 with its first smartphone model Mi1 launched in August 2011, Xiaomi quickly gained market share in the China smartphone market, and expanded its product portfolio into other consumer electronics, such as smart routers, smart TV, tablets, etc

Xiaomi was founded by Mr. LEI Jun and 7 other co-founders, and has a team of several ex-senior management from Google/Microsoft/ Motorola, etc. with diversified experience in hardware/ software/ internet.

Team & their Background
LEI Jun Chairman / CEO, Co-Founder All Vice-Chairman at Kingsoft, Angel investor

LIN Bin President, Co-Founder All, Xiaomi.com ex-VP at Google China research center, Microsoft

LI Wanqiang VP, Co-Founder Xiaomi.com, MIUI ex-Director at Kingsoft

ZHOU Guangping VP, Co-Founder Hardware, BSP ex-Director at Motorola Beijing research center

LIU De VP, Co-Founder Industrial Design, Eco-system ex-Dean of Industrial Design, Beijing Univ. of Technology

HUANG Jiangji VP, Co-Founder Router, Cloud ex-Director at Microsoft China development center

HONG Feng VP, Co-Founder MIUI ex-Product Manager at Google China

WANG Chuan VP, Co-Founder TV, Set Top Box (STB) CEO of Duokan, Founder of Thunder Stone Technology

Hugo Barra VP of int'l business International business ex-VP of Android at Google

CHEN Tong VP of content/ investment TV and content ex-Director of content at Sina.com

899

3G / HSPA / EVDO / 3G data Usage Grows 19% QoQ

« on: November 17, 2014, 09:53:12 PM »

Incumbents led by Airtel Vodafone & Idea combined, saw data revenues grow 19% qoq and 77% yoy in 2QFY15 with data forming 14.4% of their combined revenues versus 9.2% a year back. Data volumes for the composite grew 21% qoq and 103% yoy while realizations dipped 13% yoy to 28 paise/MB.

Key Performance Indicators of 3G  Mobile Data for Airtel, Vodafone and Idea

900

3G / HSPA / EVDO / Details of spectrum expiry across circles in 2014

« on: November 14, 2014, 03:46:13 PM »

The following Chart Shows Details of spectrum expiry across circles and operators at the end of 2014 and hence Spectrum Auction is necessitated in Jan 2015 to ensure continuity of Services



Note: Spectrum at end of CY-14 includes that won in February 2014 auctions