Screen Digest Reports: Television, Film and Cinema, Video and DVD, Broadband media, Mobile media and Games

Digital and 3D cinema market trends in Europe Q4 2011 | 02 Feb 12 tags › Over 2,400 digital screens were installed across Europe in the period September to end December 2011 bringing the active digital screen base to over 18,500 as at Q4 2011. It was also the third consecutive quarter more 2D screens were installed than 3D, following 3D's usurping as the main driver of roll-out, a trend first set in motion in Q2 2011. Q4 also marked the turning point for European screens which became majority digital. There are now 16 territories with the majority of screens digitised, up from 11 in Q3

The battle for patents | 02 Feb 12 tags › The last 14 months have seen a surge in companies buying patent portfolios in the technology, media and telecoms industry. Starting in late 2010 with the purchase of 882 patents from Novell by a Microsoft-led consortium there have been almost $20bn of patent-related spend from just a handful of major IT and mobile companies. In early 2012 Intel entered the fray with a $120m purchase of 360 video-related patents from RealNetworks. But regulators may be about to respond to the constant sparing as the European Commission starts antitrust reviews over Samsung's mobile claims to prevent innovation from being stiffled.

Slow but steady BD sales growth lags big increases in BD households | 02 Feb 12 tags › Although the retail sales shift from DVDs to BDs has been slower than studios and CE merchants would have liked, BD continues to enjoy strong growth in household penetration. In the first few years of its rollout, BD households were weighted toward PS3 game machines, as was the case with DVD and the original PlayStations. But in 2010 dedicated BD set-top households pulled into the lead, and most of the growth in overall BD household penetration in 2011 was due to the addition of BD set-tops. The steady growth in BD sales and BD set-top penetration has prompted studios to release more of their most sought-after library titles, setting up what we hope will become a virtuous cycle.

UltraViolet brings Amazon (partly) on board, adds disc-to-digital functionality | 31 Jan 12 tags › UltraViolet, the consortium of media, technology and retail companies established to make available a standard for video-playback inter-operability between devices and apps from diverse enablers, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas January 10 that it had registered 750,000 user accounts by year-end 2011. More importantly, it announced progress on most of the critical challenges it faces (see our "First UltraViolet discs hit US market", 12/16/11): obtaining retailer support, providing consumers living room access to their UV collections, putting existing disc collections into the UV cloud, and having third parties develop white-label front-ends easing entry for lots of service providers.

Games Publishers on Track for Solid Q4 | 26 Jan 12 tags › A mixed bag of highly successful launches and digital content have driven revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011 for the major traditional publishers in the games space. Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Electronic Arts' Battlefield 3 have generated a high-profile stand-off over one of the most lucrative game categories in console and high-end PC gaming - near-future military shooters with heavyweight multiplayer components - that between them have generated shipments of over 37m units, according to IHS Screen Digest forecasts.

Transaction pace picks up again: Mobile Funding and M&A Trends Q3 2011 | 20 Jan 12 tags › Mobile M&A activity accelerated once again after a Q2 respite with a 60 per cent increase over the previous quarter. Funding deals recovered too, making Q3 2011 the second most active quarter on record. This report looks at notable deals during the period, with a focus on mobile content deals, and a historical analysis of the coming of age of Mobile Games.

China's TV advertising industry keeps growing | 19 Jan 12 tags › China's TV advertising market grew by 11 per cent in 2011 to a market volume of Euro 24bn. Key metrics such as adspend per capita highlight that TV advertising is still undercapitalized. But regulatory changes are threat to sustainability of double-digit growth looking forward.

Pay TV on connected TVs | 19 Jan 12 tags › CES 2012 saw a number of US operators announce soon-to-launch multiscreen services for internet-enabled TV sets (IETVs). These announcements signal pay-TV's renewed - and in many instances burgeoning - interest in the IETV, and also offer an excellent opportunity to examine the state of the IETV market more generally.

Free for All: In-app Purchases to Dominate Smartphone App Business | 16 Jan 12 tags › More than 95 per cent of smartphone apps have been downloaded for free in 2011, as in-app purchases have been a major driver of growth in the smartphone apps business in 2011. Free apps have been deployed by host of companies across the mobile business including games developers, TV companies and mobile operators.

State of the US pay TV operator market | 23 Dec 11 tags › Pay TV operators were able to minimise subscriber loss in the third quarter of 2011, compared to a year earlier. After posting a net subscriber loss of 54,000 last year, net declines were only 9,000 in the same quarter this year. The improvement is largely due to better cable video retention strategies, and stronger performance in the satellite segment. In contrast, the IPTV segment's growth has shown signs of slowing down. This market monitor examines the third-quarter results in the context of the long-term trends in our US pay TV projection model.

NDS prepares for IPO | 23 Dec 11 tags › NDS has filed for a $100m IPO, returning to being a publically listed company. The current company has benefited from several years of strong growth in the conditional access across the pay TV industry, and this round of funding could be used to bolster development in the rapidly changing market for multiscreen TV.

Europe's multichannel market | 21 Dec 11 tags › The main 5 Western European markets (representing 60 per cent of the total European pay TV Market) and Poland are analysed with respect to the number of unique TV channels available on each pay TV platform (Cable, DTT, IPTV, Satellite). Platform popularity in the six markets is very much down to local conditions, with no clear frontrunner for channel choice. France has the largest number of unique TV channels of Europe's six major Markets - 716 - followed by the UK with 500. Poland has the fewest, 284.