News and Events - March 2003
Mon 31st Mar, 2003
Agreement with BT Broadcast Services
Forbidden announces an agreement with BT Broadcast Services to offer a turn-key Mobile Video solution to broadcasters and mobile phone operators.
Fri 28th Mar, 2003
Government tourism report
Computer Weekly quotes a recent Tourism Sector report: "the tourism industry must utilise online technologies to overcome the difficulties caused by the tough economic conditions".
Thu 27th Mar, 2003
Online advertising underrated
"The information we are getting back is that advertisers don't want to be in news programmes", said Steve Anderson, the ITV controller of news and current affairs in the Guardian. Regarding online advertising, the FT points out that 1% of advertising is online whereas 8% of all adult media consumption is online, and "the lessons being learnt ... could help UK websites close the gap".
Wed 26th Mar, 2003
FT article on Forbidden
Alan Cane, a senior technology correspondent for the Financial Times, summarises the current state of play for Forbidden's video compression.
Mon 24th Mar, 2003
Broadband redefined
"... two years ago broadband was a high speed internet service operating at a minimum speed of 384 kilobits per second ... the DTI now views broadband as a 'generic term describing a range of technologies operating at various data transfer speeds' ... under this regime so-called broadband users total about 1.5m instead of less impressive estimates of about 700,000 ". The Telegraph has this and other articles. Forbidden Technologies can stream video at these lower datarates.
Fri 21st Mar, 2003
Online travel sales soar
Nua writes in a recent article: "Online travel sales in Western Europe increased 53 percent during 2002 ... Overall travel sales in 2002 were worth EUR7.3 billion, or 3.5 percent of the tourism and travel market".
Thu 20th Mar, 2003
50 million mobiles in Britain
The Telegraph details the growth of mobile phone subscribers in Britain from 1,140,000 in 1990 to 49,860,000 in 2002. They assert: "Already analysts are predicting that within a few years, more people could be watching the news or sports highlights on their mobile phones than on television".
Wed 19th Mar, 2003
The World's Online Populations
CyberAtlas gives their estimate of the world online internet population in 2002 by country. The total for 2002 is probably between 580 million and 655 million. Their sources include the CIA's World Factbook, Nielsen//NetRatings and the ITU.
Fri 14th Mar, 2003
DSL growing
CyberAtlas notes "Global DSL subscriptions nearly doubled during 2002, from 18.8 million to 35.9 million ...". China is growing fastest with second half growth of 214%.
Thu 13th Mar, 2003
EU review says Microsoft breached rules
"European regulators have moved a step closer towards taking action against Microsoft, after an internal review concluded that the US software group had breached competition law" according to the Financial Times. The article also mentions that the European Commission " ... recommends a separation of Media Player, Microsoft's video-playing software, from Windows."
Wed 12th Mar, 2003
Mobile phone sales up 6 percent
Gartner Dataquest has published figures for mobile phone sales in 2002. The Register reports: "Global mobile phone sales rose some 6 percent last year to 423.4 million units ... ". Reuters quotes from the same source market shares of 35.8% for Nokia, 15.6% for Motorola, 9.8% for Samsung, 8.2% for Siemens and 6.7% for Sony Ericsson.
Tue 4th Mar, 2003
3G launched in UK
The Guardian reports "Launching today, 3's new mobile phone service is overpriced and only marginally better than that offered by Vodaphone (sic) Live!'s 2.5G". In this Reuters article Keith Bradley of 3 UK said "...now we just have to deliver the handsets". Computer Weekly quotes Ovum as recommending that "corporate users use ... GPRS" while the FT notes "Hutchinson (sic) launches 3G to little fanfare", The Register doesn't mention it at all.
