Roku Raising $30 Million; Sees Potential IPO in 2011
Saratoga,
Calif. – Roku, a maker of devices
including a set-top box intended to bring Web video and other online content to
the television, plans to raise $30 million in private funding this quarter and
may go public next year, CEO Anthony Wood told Bloomberg. Previous backer Menlo
Ventures has already signed on to the current funding round; the company has
not yet chosen an investment bank or IPO date. "Obviously our goal is to
go public," Wood told Bloomberg. "If things continue on this
trajectory, I think it would be viable to go public next year."
Wood added
that the company has not sold more than 500,000 of its Roku Digital Video
Player set-top boxes, which help users stream content from services like Netflix
and Amazon to a television.
The company plans to continue to cut prices on the
devices, which currently range in price from $79 to $129.
Wood told Bloomberg
that Roku expects to sell 1 million set-tops this year, and expand the content
available in its new Roku Channel Store — where producers can place content
for sale or create subscription services, with Roku taking a cut of revenues.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7i59
(Bloomberg)
http://snipurl.com/u7i2w
(NewTeeVee)
Apple Unveils "iPad" Touch-screen Tablet Computer
San Francisco – Apple (NASD: AAPL) on Wednesday
unveiled its long-anticipated tablet computer, the "iPad," at a media
event in San Francisco.
The device, which will cost between $500 and $830 when it ships in coming
months, is a half-inch thin, weighs 1.5 lbs., and sports a 9.7-inch display
with virtual keyboard, built-in speakers and microphone. "It looks like,
well, a big iPhone, pretty much as anticipated," The New York Times wrote
on its live blog of the event.
The device will be available with 16GB, 32GB or
64GB of Flash-based storage. For connectivity, it features free AT&T (NYSE: T) Wi-Fi hotspots,
Bluetooth and AT&T 3G service, costing $15 for up to 250MB of data per
month, to $29 per month for unlimited data.
Pricing for the iPad will depend on
amount of memory and whether the version supports 3G; a 16GB version without 3G
costs $500, while the 3G version will sell for $630.
Apple said the iPad offers
10 hours of battery life, with over a month of standby life.
On the software
front, the iPad will ship with a built-in calendar, address book, Maps
application, and iTunes Store.
On stage at the event, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs
said the App Store now counts 140,000 applications, which have been downloaded
3 billion times.
For the iPad, users can access applications as they would
appear on the iPhone, or in automated "pixel-doubled" version that
makes the apps run "full screen." The company also said developers
will be able to modify their applications to take advantage of the iPad’s
larger display.
Jobs showed off the how the device’s size allows it to more
properly display newspaper websites, including Time.com and NYTimes.com, and
was joined on stage by Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital
operations for The New York Times Company.
A new iBooks application for the
iPad will let users download e-books directly from the iTunes Store in the EPUB
format. Apple touted support from publishers including Penguin, HarperCollins,
Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette.
Several of the bloggers covering
the event reiterated a potential concern with regard to watching long-form
video on a tablet computer: that a user would have to prop the device up on her
lap, or else peer down at it resting on a flat surface — with the alternative
being to hold it at an angle for two-plus hours during a movie.
A dock accessory
announced appears to serve as a prop for the device; Apple will also a physical
keyboard accessory for the iPad, that doubles as a battery charger.
Models
without 3G will ship in 60 days, while the 3G models will ship in 90; while pre-orders
are not yet available, the company is offering an email notification service.
Poll: How Do You Rate Apple’s New iPad?
Related Links:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/27ipad.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/apple-tablet-event/
http://snipurl.com/u7hf6
(N.Y. Times)
ClearSaleing Raises $1.7 Million for Advertising Analytics
Columbus,
Ohio – ClearSaleing, a provider of
online advertising analytics services, has raised $1.7 million in its third
round of funding from NCT Ventures Fund I.
The company said the investment from
NCT closes out a $3.75 million combination debt and equity funding package
"put in place to ensure the company could continue to make strategic
investments in product development, marketing and sales," said ClearSaleing
president Randy Smith.
Founded in 2006, Columbus, Ohio-based ClearSaleing’s
platform helps marketers and ad agencies manage their ad portfolios and more
efficiently and profitably allocate ad spending across a mix of online ad
investments.
The company also provides attribution management service.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7i09
International Social Network XIHA Life Lands $1 Million
Helsinki,
Finland – XIHA
Life, an online social network targeted at people living outside their home
country, as well as multilingual people around the world, has raised $1 million
in seed funding, led by Veraventure.
International angel investors and the company’s
founders also participated in the round.
Founded in 2007, Finland-based XIHA
Life counts over 700,000 members in more than 200 countries; the company noted
that no one country accounts for more than 5% of its total Web traffic.
The
site offers language recognition and filtering technology that lets users
select several different languages to communicate with new friends and people.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7hyc
Citizen Journalism Service AllVoices Nabs $3 Million
San Francisco
– AllVoices, a citizen journalism site, has raised $3 million in a new round of
funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners, TechCrunch reported.
Founded in
2008, San Francisco-based AllVoices lets any user upload news content to the site,
and counts 5 million unique monthly visitors.
Contributors can be paid for
their work, depending on the number of page views their stories attract,
ranging from $0.25 per 1,000 views, with a minimum of 10,000 views, to $2.00 per 1,000 page views, with a minimum of 100,000 views.
The company
has now raised about $7.5 million in funding to date.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7hfi
(TechCrunch)
YouTube-Sundance Movie Rental Test Fails to Grab Viewers
San Bruno,
Calif. – YouTube’s (NASD: GOOG) experiment
with movie rentals tied to the Sundance Film Festival did not yield very
encouraging results, if NewTeeVee’s report on the numbers is correct. The five
films made available for 48-hour rental at $3.99 each generated a total of
1,500 rentals between them, according to NewTeeVee. That works out to less than
$6,000 in sales, or about $1,200 per film.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u784b
(NewTeeVee)
http://snipurl.com/u784s
(DMW previous coverage)
Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement Adds Members
New York
– The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), a group aiming to develop
new audience measurement techniques for TV and cross-platform video, announced
that Gannett, PepsiCo, Belo, ConAgra, Hearst and Microsoft have joined the
group. Among CIMM’s first initiatives is set-top box measurement, and the group
is embarking to establish a common "STB Lexicon" for analyzing and
processing set-top box measurement. Existing CIMM members include AT&T,
CBS, Carat, Discovery, GroupM, NBC Universal, News Corp., Omnicom, Publicis,
Time Warner and Disney.
Related Links:
http://www.cimm-us.org/press1.htm
PRS for Music Inks Pan-European Licensing Deal with iTunes
London – U.K. collecting
society PRS for Music, which represents 65,000 songwriters and music
publishers, has signed a pan-European licensing agreement with Apple’s (NASD: AAPL) iTunes
Store. The deal includes the mechanical rights of Peer Music, Chrysalis Music
Publishing and certain Warner Chappell repertoire.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u78jm
http://snipurl.com/u78ju
(Billboard)
