Samsung plans to smash Android rivals..what about the iPad?

The most dramatic aspect of the smartphone market in the second half of 2010 has been the reinvention of Samsung. Samsung's Galaxy S has shipped 7 million units and has set targets of 20 million for this year – plus one million tablets.

Always a powerhouse in mass market handsets and feature-packed media phones, the Korean giant was still the ugly duckling of open OS smartphones. But the success of its Galaxy S Android range, and to a lesser extent the Wave, which runs its own bada OS, have turned it into a swan that is giving Apple a run for its money in terms of mobile allure – and aims to have the same effect in tablets.

Samsung is targeting over 40m unit sales in this category next year, according to mobile division chief Shin Jong-kyun. He told the Nikkei business daily that Samsung is targeting 20m smartphone sales worldwide this year and double that figure in 2011. Both forecasts are improvements on Samsung‟s original goal, articulated when it unveiled Galaxy S, when it said it would sell 18m this year. However, it is being slightly more cautious than in September, when it said 2010 would see 25m shipments, rather than the vaguer “more than 20m” of Shin's interview. By the end of 2011, however, the firm expects to have double-digit smartphone share, though still lower than its overall handset share of 20 per cent and rising...

from The Register

Hulu To Double Revenue to $240M-Plus This Year

On the strength of its ad sales, Hulu says it's on pace to double its revenue this year. CEO Jason Kilar highlighted several ways that Hulu was trying to make ads more effective, saying that ads on Hulu are 55 percent more effective than ads on traditional TV channels when measuring whether consumers remembered the brand and the message shown.

Online video Relevant Products/Services site Hulu is on pace to generate more than $240 million in revenue this year, more than double the $108 million in 2009...

from CRM Daily

From an ad insert in the latest New Media Age for the NMA Masterclass Live, 12th November in London

[click for larger version]

Yet more evidence to suggest that online video will continue to see explosive growth...

"Up significantly since the middle of 2008, spending on internet video advertising will continue to grow in the years to come. Video advertising will be the most dynamic format in the online ad market, propelled by technical advances in the field combined with the tremendous explosion of online video consumption. Video advertising has become a powerful growth engine for the display market in particular, for it can be beautifully adapted to advertisers’ branding concerns. Plus, it allows advertisers to repurpose the commercials they develop for television.

Online video sites and services will be the first to benefit from this boom. Ad revenues from online video sites will grow at an average annual rate of 54.4 percent, to capture 13 percent of the internet advertising market in 2014 with EUR 11.2 billion. Video will in fact be the largest of the three emerging markets in the US and Europe in 2014, although the mobile web will dominate globally..."

from TelecomPaper

IPTV platform seeks partner(s) for technical intercourse

"Would-be UK IPTV standard setter YouView has called on content providers to register their interest in supporting the platform it is developing.

YouView said it was seeking to spot "a small number of audio and video on-demand content providers that can closely work with the YouView technical team to develop and test the processes for making content available via YouView"."

from The Register

Google it: Ask.com gives up ghost on search market

"Ask.com has quit the internet search biz and is laying off around 130 engineers.

It will no longer attempt to compete with Google’s might and will instead fix its efforts on finding answers to questions via search requests.

Ask.com, which is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, is cutting back its total workforce of about 400 people by nearly one-third by letting go of employees in Edison, New Jersey and Hangzhou, China.

The company’s Q&A site will use web algorithms developed by an unnamed search engine."

from The Register

Comment: Hmm, and this doesn't bode so well. Hasn't Ask long been trumpeted as one of Blinkx's high-profile search partners? Not any more, looks like...

This is interesting..

From an article on a different subject, but mentioned almost in passing:

"Breaking those figures down, 87 per cent of Europeans have mobile access, up 4 percentage points, while 73 per cent have fixed phone access, up 3 points.

A lucky 62 per cent have fixed and mobile access - up 5 points - while 25 per have mobile but no fixed access.

....

TV access is almost as complete as phone access, at 98 per cent, up 2 percentage points."

from The Register

Comment: bodes well for Blinkx (despite the share price slide of recent days!)