The Wall Street Journal reported that the two CEOs would step down Monday morning and be replaced by Thorston Heins, who has been RIM’s chief operating officer. They will both stay on RIM’s board, but will no longer have executive roles at the company founded by Lazaridis and overseen by the duo for nearly two decades.

The company confirmed the move in a press release following the published report, and Balsillie and Lazardis granted interviews to the WSJ in conjunction with release of the report, interestingly timed for the middle of the San Francisco 49ers-New York Giants championship game in San Francisco. In the report, they said they were not pushed from their roles but it’s hard to take that at face value, given that RIM was under serious pressure from investors to release a plan for management changes by the end of January following a deal cut just before its annual meeting last July.

Lazaridis will become vice chair of RIM’s board and will chair something called the Innovation Committee. RIM said he will provide “strategic counsel” to Heins and will apparently be much more active than Balsillie, who will remain on the board but with no new public role. Barbara Stymiest, a current RIM board member, will become Board Chair.

The former CEOs, as well as Heins, also spoke to their hometown paper, the Globe and Mail, in advance of actually announcing the move. Heims has been chief operating officer of product engineering for RIM following a reorganization last year in which RIM laid off employees and attempted to streamline its operation. But that wasn’t enough to prevent the company from making several more product and strategic mistakes during the latter half of 2012.

RIM is in deep trouble for taking far too long to react to the launch of the iPhone, a seminal moment in the modern mobile computing industry that was initially dismissed by RIM’s management has having been faked by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). Changing consumer tastes for smartphones led to a precipitous drop in RIM’s U.S. market share in 2010 and throughout 2011, and the company has fumbled several attempts to catch up. New BlackBerry 7 handsets were delayed in 2011 after RIM miscalculated the processing power that would be required, and a similar mistake led to the delay of its first QNX-based smartphones, which were supposed to appear in early 2012 but now aren’t expected until the end of the year.

Heins promised the Globe and Mail that “what you will see with me is rigour and flawless execution.” That’s something RIM could surely use following all the product delays, but the company also needs to articulate a clearer vision for how it intends to transition between the staid BlackBerry OS and the newer QNX operating system, which RIM has renamed BlackBerry 10 yet struggled to get anyone to notice the software following the failed launch of its Playbook tablet.

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———————————————————
NEW YORK, Jan. 20, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE)—The Wall Street Journal has named Raju Narisetti as Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, which includes WSJ.com, SmartMoney.com, MarketWatch and the Chinese, Japanese and German-language editions of WSJ.com. Mr. Narisetti will also become a Deputy Managing Editor of the Journal, and he will report to Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor and Executive Editor, Online.

Mr. Narisetti currently serves as Managing Editor for The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO), where he oversees the company’s digital content products, staff and strategy. Today’s appointment marks a return to the Journal for Mr. Narisetti, who first joined the paper in 1994 as a reporter in Pittsburgh and most recently served as Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe in 2006.

“Raju has done remarkable work as the digital czar at the Washington Post, integrating print and online businesses, building a successful web site, and developing key relationships with the digerati,” said Robert Thomson, Editor-in-Chief of Dow Jones and Managing Editor of the Journal. “His experience in creating Mint, a national web site and newspaper in India, also brings important relationships and unique expertise that will assist us as we expand our global digital network. Raju is wired, and we are jazzed.”

“Raju knows the world, knows digital journalism, and knows the Journal,” said Mr. Murray. “He is the perfect person to lead us into a new era of global growth.”

Mr. Narisetti’s appointment follows the recent departure of WSJ.com Managing Editor Kevin Delaney.

Strong Digital Growth from New Content, Product Offerings and Global Expansion

The Wall Street Journal Digital Network has seen tremendous growth in recent years with the introduction of expanded news coverage, content and new products as well as increased usage across its Web sites, mobile applications and tablet editions. The network has more than 1.3 million paid digital subscribers across multiple platforms and devices, and averages more than 50 million visitors per month online.

WSJ.com’s success has been buoyed by an expansion in politics, national and world news, sports and lifestyle coverage, as well as live and on-demand video, real-time blogs and the launch of premium verticals. WSJ.com generated a 42% year-over-year increase in traffic in 2011, averaging more than 36 million visitors per month worldwide. The new WSJ Live interactive video application is already available to millions of users via the iPad and multiple Internet-connected televisions and set-top boxes.

Globally, more than 30% of the total digital audience comes from outside the North American market, including Asia, which generates more than 11 million visitors per month, and nearly six million from Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2011, traffic to the Journal’s Chinese- and Japanese-language Web sites increased 38% and 150%, respectively.

To further serve its expanding global audience, the Journal and Dow Jones have launched a series of regionally focused digital initiatives – the most recent of which, a German-language news site (WSJ.de), launched earlier this month. Other regional offerings are available, including China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe.

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Much more in our CES archives.

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In this constantly changing and fast paced industry, sometimes it’s important to stop and see how all the pieces fit together. Consider: in the space of a few days, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) canceled plans to completely separate streaming from DVD and signed an eye-catching deal with the CW; cloud-based VOD scheme UltraViolet went live; Universal announced a premium VOD, then canceled when exhibitors threatened a boycott; and Disney (NYSE: DIS) and News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS) took Hulu off the block. Then there’s the upcoming launch of the Kindle Fire, which will unlock Amazon’s media assets for mobile use, and ... you get the picture.

We’ve added some new speakers to help us put the puzzle together, including two successful entertainment execs applying their considerable skills to new endeavors:

»   Dawn Ostroff joined publisher Condé Nast just last month as president of Condé Nast Entertainment, a new endeavor for the development and distribution of video and film initiatives as well as creating original web content. Ostroff launched the CW as president of entertainment, greenlighting Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries and the other programs that netted that deal with Netflix—worth up to $1 billion for the Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner-CBS (NYSE: CBS) joint venture.

»   David Maisel, who launched Marvel Studios and was chairman until Marvel Entertainment was sold to Disney, is now special adviser to game developer Rovio. Maisel is helping the company build its entertainment strategy, including bringing game franchise Angry Birds to the big screen. He’ll serve as executive producer for any Angry Birds films; his executive producer credits already include Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

Other new speakers include: Christy Tanner, General Manager and Executive Vice President, TV Guide Digital; Lisa Donovan, Co-Founder, Maker Studios; Dana Settle, Founding Partner, Greycroft LLC; Lisa Donovan, Co-Founder, Maker Studios; and digital entertainment vet Courtney Holt. Stay tuned—more announcements to come. Until then, here’s our speaker list so far.

Be part of the conversation on what’s happening now and what’s coming next-and how you can stay ahead. Register now.

The hashtag for the event is #pcE11.

These two rights packages were not exploited in the 2011/11 season but Perform holds them for the 2011/12 season. It is sub-licensing the mobile clips exclusively and the internet package non-exclusively to Times Of India.

• The internet highlights will go out on Indiatimes.com but Perform will also exploit them through its own ePlayer VOD product, which can be embedded on websites. Both Perform and Times Of India will sell ad inventory.
• The mobile highlights will go out through Indiatimes.com’s 58888 mobile service and through Times-branded sections of Indian telcos’ mobile portals.

Perform also holds similar rights packages in Spain and facilitates online broadcast for international rightsholders including Fox (NSDQ: NWS) Sports (Australia), Fox Soccer Channel (U.S.), abu Dhabi Media Company and Rogers (Canada).

Times Internet Limited’s Rishi Khiani (via release): “Given the growing popularity of football, especially England’s Barclays Premier League, in India, this is a strategic content partnership for us.

“Couple this with the growth of fans accessing sport via connected devices and our reach in the Indian market, we are poised to capitalize on these trends whilst simultaneously providing our readers and advertising partners with exciting new sport content.”

The company also revealed that the areas affected now include South America, with users in Brazil, Chile and Argentina suffering loss of service.

With more than 70 million subscribers to its services around the world, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) may have suffered lasting damage to its reputation. Reaction on social networks suggested that some users are considering moving to other platforms, such as Android phones or Apple’s iPhone, which are not reliant on RIM’s centralised service for connectivity.

The Guardian understands the problems have been caused by database corruption in Slough. Though the teams believed it had been fixed on Monday, the problem reappeared on Tuesday, effectively disabling the network operations centre. The Guardian also understands that RIM’s staff now hope to have the problem fixed by 8am BST on Wednesday.

The outage follows one that began on Monday morning at about 11am BST and lasted until late in the afternoon. RIM had indicated that the problem was fixed, but on Tuesday morning BlackBerry users discovered they had once again lost service, with limited access to emails, web browsing and secure services such as BBM.

The problems have caused some people to reconsider their use of RIM’s platform, which relies on its own servers to encrypt communications and connect BlackBerry devices to the internet. Any time that RIM’s servers suffer an outage like that which has hit it over the past two days, users of the systems can find reception of emails, texts and web browsing severely limited.

Any loss of customers in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region would be a serious problem for RIM, which has been losing market share in North America, traditionally one of its strongest markets, to phones running Google’s Android mobile operating system and to Apple’s iPhone.

In the US, RIM has lost 4.3 million users in the past year, according to calculations by Horace Dediu, of the independent consultancy Asymco. “[It] is now at about the same number of users it had in late 2009. This is in a market that has more than doubled,” he noted.

“With only about 16.5 million US users and an average loss of half a million users per month, unless something drastic happens, RIM could lose its entire US user base by the end of next year.”

RIM has been aiming to balance that by expansion in EMEA and regions such as India. But it is being badly squeezed on price there by more affordable Android phones. Its most recent quarterly results showed revenues down by 10 percent year on year, and profits crashing by 60 percent.

In the EMEA region, RIM has been showing growth in the number of handset sales over the past quarter, according to data from ComTech WorldPanel seen by the Guardian. This has largely balanced out losses of users in the US.

But the company has been under growing financial pressure this year as its investment in its PlayBook tablet has failed to ignite sales: it shipped just 500,000 in its first quarter on sale in spring, and only 200,000 in the succeeding quarter. In the US it is now offering $200 discounts, but those have not been extended to the UK. Sources with sight of UK retailing figures said that: “RIM partners have been told to keep shtum about the bad situation [of PlayBook sales].”

The Guardian’s calculations suggest that RIM has up to 800,000 PlayBooks in its in-house inventory. The total inventory held by the company has swollen to the equivalent of almost 35 percent of revenues, suggesting a serious backlog of unsold equipment.

RIM’s manager for the EMEA area was not available to comment. In a statement issued at 4pm BST on Tuesday, the company said: “Some users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are experiencing messaging and browsing delays. We are working to restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.”

Ontario-based RIM is the only smartphone platform which uses the system, devised in its early days so that it could offer secure connectivity for early users, and reduce the amount of bandwidth used by individual devices. Communications for North America are directed through its hub at its Ontario headquarters, while those for Europe, the Middle East and Africa run through its headquarters in Slough.

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Jobs stepped down from his longtime role as Apple CEO in August, after years of suffering from complications related to pancreatic cancer. His death comes one day after Apple unveiled the latest version of one of his many game-changing technology products, the iPhone.

Apple’s board of directors announced his death in a statement:

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

The company took the iPhone 4S off its home page following the announcement of Jobs’ death and replaced it with his official Apple portrait.

Upon clicking on Jobs’s image, Apple displayed this statement and invited visitors to submit their memories to rememberingsteve@apple.com:

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

Under Jobs, Apple changed the technology industry more than once over his two separate terms in office, most recently from 1997, when he re-assumed command of the company he founded with Steve Wozniak. That stretch in Apple’s history produced the iMac, iPod, iTunes, Macbook Air, iPhone, iPad, and billions of dollars in profits.

Jobs’ health problems began in 2004, when he underwent surgery to treat pancreatic cancer. He appeared to regain his health but started to appear thinner and thinner throughout 2008 and into 2009, in what was believed to be an inability to properly digest food. He took a six-month medical leave from Apple in 2009, and underwent a liver transplant during that time. After returning to Apple in the summer of 2009, the company introduced the iPad in 2010 in order to jump-start a whole new category of mobile computing that was largely defined by Apple’s (and Jobs’) taste and skills.

He took an indefinite medical leave earlier this year, and stepped down as CEO in August, giving way to longtime understudy Tim Cook.

Cook sent an e-mail to Apple employees following the announcement, which Apple distributed. “No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much,” he wrote.

Jobs is survived by his wife Laurene and their three children: Reed, Erin, and Eve. Jobs was also the father of Lisa Brennan-Jobs.

Jobs’ family issued this statement:

Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family. In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories. We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.

A spectrum of individual reactions from around the tech, business, media, and even political worlds poured out Wednesday evening.

More on Steve Jobs in our archives.

President Obama issued this statement:

By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.  By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun.  And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike.

With the 2006 sale of Pixar to Disney (NYSE: DIS) for $7.4 billion in stock, Jobs, who has been compared to Walt Disney in terms of creative vision and impact, became the largest individual shareholder and a member of the board. But his influence at Disney began before that.

In 2005, he convinced Disney CEO Bob Iger to make ABC the first broadcast network offering programs through iTunes. The rapport the two of them achieved helped make the Pixar deal possible and laid the groundwork for a successful integration. Iger issued this statement:

Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor.  His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an ‘original,’ with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin posted this on his Google+ feed:

From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino. Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now). And I have witnessed it in person the few times we have met. On behalf of all of us at Google and more broadly in technology, you will be missed very much. My condolences to family, friends, and colleagues at Apple.

Larry Page, Google’s current CEO and co-founder, had this to say:

He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me. He was very kind to reach out to me as I became CEO of Google and spend time offering his advice and knowledge even though he was not at all well.

Google, a fierce rival of Apple’s over the past several years, added a link to Apple’s Web page and Jobs tribute beneath its search bar with the simple inscription “Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011.”

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Jobs’ foil for decades, invoked a famous Jobs catchphrase on his Twitter feed: “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.” Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and the likely heir to Jobs’ status as the most iconic leader in Silicon Valley, posted this on his personal Facebook feed: “Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.”

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The iPhone 4S is basically the same design as the iPhone 4 but with a redesigned wireless antenna that will supposedly offer a better voice-calling experience (novel idea for a phone) and it will be a so-called “world phone,” meaning it will run on both the GSM and CDMA family of wireless network standards. It will start shipping on October 14th in several countries including the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan, and be available on AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon, and Sprint (NYSE: S) in the U.S., as expected. A broader international rollout will follow on October 28th.

Apple upgraded the camera on the iPhone 4S, improving the speed at which it can take and process images as well as adding HD video recording. But the meat of the presentation was saved for Siri, a voice-recognition service that will let iPhone 4S users set up calendar appointments and tasks on their phone. Perhaps more significantly, it will also allow iPhone 4S users to search the Internet with voice commands, tapping into information services like Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha.

If Siri works as advertised, that could be a problem for Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which depends heavily on iPhone owners for mobile Web searches. Apple said this would be a “beta” service to start (that means expect bugs) and it will support English, French, and German at launch. For its part, Google has offered voice commands on Android phones for over a year, but it’s unclear how many people actually use those services.

Apple said the iPhone 4S will cost $199 for a 16GB version, $299 for a 32GB version, and $399 for a 64GB version, the first time Apple has offered an iPhone at that capacity. It will continue to sell the iPhone 4 for $99 in black and white versions, and will sell the iPhone 3GS for free (presumably with a two-year contract).

The new device was announced during Apple’s first event since former CEO and current Chairman Steve Jobs stepped down from his leadership role in August. Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO, and Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice president in charge of iOS software, handled most of the introductions. Apple is hoping to keep the momentum in its mobile business going under the new leadership team, which has sold 250 million iOS devices to date, Cook announced.

Details were trickling out of an auditorium on Apple’s campus, where a dozen or so live blogs groaned under the weight of those seeking information about Apple’s new iPhone plans. Some believe the company also plans to introduce an iPhone 5 model with more features later in the presentation.

Apple senior vice president of marketing Phil Schiller introduced the iPhone 4S, just minutes after announcing that Apple planned to cut the price of the iOS-bearing iPod Touch by $30 to $199 for the cheapest 8GB version.

Forstall spent a great deal of time recapping the features Apple announced in June for iOS 5, which will be available on October 12th. But Apple also announced Cards, a new iOS 5 application that lets users design a postcard on their iPhone and iPad and have Apple print out that card and mail it for a fee, $2.99 in the U.S.

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iCloud will come with an app called “Find My Friends,” a location-aware service that seems akin to Foursquare or Google’s Latitude that lets friends share their location with one another through iCloud, Cue announced. He promised that the app would have “simple privacy controls,” according to a number of live reports from Apple’s event.

Cue otherwise spent the majority of his talk rehashing parts of the iCloud service that Apple already announced in June, such as iTunes Match and iTunes In The Cloud.

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The biggest app stores are now tipping the half-million mark in terms of overall inventory, but a recent report from the app analytics firm found that when it comes to the most popular apps, consumers often gravitate to content published especially for their markets. In the biggest store of all—the App Store from Apple—on average, nearly one-third of the most popular apps in each country store—27 percent—were unique to those stores.

Distimo notes that the U.S.—at 7,158 apps—has the most exclusively published apps in its App Store. No surprise, really, given this is where so many developers are based and where so many hope to find success first before trying elsewhere.

Looking at worldwide trends, language also plays a big role.

Taking the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia, these countries’ top apps overlap 54 percent of the time. Although Latin America does not seem to get ranked by Distimo, you can imagine that it too would see a similar trend. The storewide average overlap is 33 percent.

On the other hand, countries with the highest number of localized apps in the top rankings marry two important trends: they have very mobile-friendly consumers, and they are countries where English is not the first language.

Japan topped the list with 67 percent of its most popular apps being popular in that country alone. China, where Apple launched a country-specific App Store in October 2010, came in second with 56 percent of most popular apps specific to the China App Store.

Is there a limit to how many local apps have a chance against the world-wide bestsellers like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja? For now, it appears the answer is yes. Distimo notes that one-third local seems to be the general number for local apps’ popularity across all platforms, not just Apple’s.

Nokia’s Ovi Store, for example, has significantly more country-specific apps than other app stores—29.4 percent for Ovi with Apple the next-highest proportion at only 5.2 percent—but Distimo notes that the number of local apps that make it into the top rankings are roughly the same as for the App Store and the Android Market, despite Apple’s and Google’s catalogs having far fewer local apps.

That could spell an opportunity for those developers looking to have more visibility among users in specific markets.

You can see that trend playing out especially in China. Platforms like Android are seeing the creation of full-out local app stores to compete with the Android Market, catering to those using devices built on the OS, with app stores from the likes of Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU) and Tencent.

There have also been a number of companies setting up shop to help localize apps from, say, the U.S. market for the Chinese market. The most recent of these was an effort from the DIY app platform Mobile Roadie, which as partnered with local mobile agency FabriQate to launch Q Mobao to help Western developers create iOS and Android apps for the Chinese market. It has also launched a similar initiative in South Korea.

Targeting specific markets is not just about local content, of course.

Last week IDC published figures (via Bloomberg) for smartphone market share in India, and it turns out that Apple has only a tiny part of the market in that country, shipping just over 62,000 iPhones to India in the last quarter, less than it shipped to Norway. That gives Apple a 2.6 percent share of the smartphone market in India. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) currently enjoys the biggest share of the market in India, with 46 percent.

With India the second-largest mobile market after China, that is a big miss for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). IDC notes that part of the issue has been a lack of widespread 3G network for fast mobile data services. Although users can still connect by WiFi, that’s an impractical solution for a person on the move.

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To succeed, Amazon must, and I’m sure will, take a different approach.

The success of the Kindle shows Amazon is prepared to think differently from others and to disrupt its own products — in the Kindle’s case to disrupt the cash cow of print book sales — in order to be innovative and seize early advantage in digital markets. If Amazon’s hardware is undifferentiated and virtually the same as RIM’s PlayBook then Amazon has to differentiate elsewhere with content, experience and business models. Otherwise it will suffer the same fate as RIM’s PlayBook.

Amazon cares little about the post-PC world, unlike Apple and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) who are playing that different game. Instead, Amazon is driven by a post disc and post print world where all media will be digital.

Amazon will build a true media tablet. The first true media tablet. The Kindle tablet will focus on the future of all media — TV, movies, music, books, magazines — to enable Amazon to become the dominant digital media retailer. That is Amazon’s ambition.

On that basis, here are the areas to watch for in Amazon’s tablet product launch and what impact each item will have on the market:

—The extent to which the Kindle tablet’s business model is content-subsidized. Few devices enjoy a lower up front price because of content subsidy. It’s hard to do. Games consoles are the obvious exception but even in that market history is awash with console failures. Nintendo’s 3DS is the most recent struggler. Outside of games almost all devices are priced without a content subsidy. Even Apple sees content revenues as icing rather than a key profit centre that would warrant a lower up front price for iPads or iPhones. Carriers too subsidise iPhones based on communication revenues, not media. Arguably, only Amazon’s own Kindle eReader has extended a content-led device sales model outside of the games market. If Amazon offers its tablet for a very low price, based on expectations of future content sales, then Amazon will successfully disrupt the market and enjoy very significant sales. If the price is tied to hardware costs, then the price will be less aggressive and Amazon’s tablet will compete at a similar price to rivals and consumers will judge it based on the overall product package.

—The extent of the app catalogue available at launch and soon afterwards. If the tablet is based on Android 2.x then it should be compatible with most existing Android smartphone apps, but ironically won’t work with the tablet interface-optimized Honeycomb Android apps. But there’s not many of those, so that won’t matter for now. Additionally, app creators will need to submit their apps to Amazon’s app store and accept Amazon’s terms. This is not a given. Amazon’s control over app pricing has upset some app creators. (See app developer bit hack’s views or the letter from the International Game Developers Association.

—The type of colour screen used: LCD or Mirasol / eInk. If Amazon uses an LCD, like PC notebooks and the iPad, then the device will be highly suited for video playback but have poor daylight visibility. This means there will be a continuing need for existing eInk Kindles that work well outside and are super light due to their need for only a small battery. Amazon will likely position its tablet as a complement and attempt to sell cross sell tablets and traditional Kindles. If Qualcomm Mirasol or a colour eInk screen is included then the tablet will be more eReader than iPad and be positioned as a replacement device to existing Kindles. This is much less likely due to both the state of that screen technology and to Amazon’s desire to establish a strong video on demand service.

—Whether there is any business relationship with Google, for example the inclusion of Google apps like Gmail or Maps. Leaks suggest the Amazon tablet is based upon Android v2 — not the 3.x Honeycomb version which underpins Android tablets such as the Motorola Xoom or Samsung Galaxy 10.1 — and lacks any of Google’s proprietary apps. Amazon would not be the first tablet maker to ship hardware with no access to Google’s app store. But existing firms that have done that — Archos, Viewsonic and numerous no-name brands — are too small to worry Google… unlike Amazon. If the Kindle tablet embarks on this path of using Android but offering no upside to Google by supporting Google’s own businesses such as maps, advertising, search, docs, Gmail then expect Google to continue to take greater control over Android. Already, the Honeycomb source code is not publicly available, unlike older versions, which means hardware makers need to work with Google to ship devices that use Honeycomb and are unable to go it alone. In this scenario, Google will likely take the same approach with Ice Cream and other future Android updates and Android will become less and less open.

—The role for new visual eBook and magazine formats. With a colour screen Amazon is no longer limited to simple text and black & white illustrations. Will Amazon now release full format eBooks to replace or complement existing Kindle editions? Will existing eBook buyers have to buy again to enjoy new editions? How will Amazon manage compatibility between current low res black and white eInk Kindles and the tablet? Lots to watch for here.

—Type of connectivity, 3G / WiFi, and route to market. If Amazon ships a purely WiFi-based tablet then its route to market will be simple retail. But Whispersync will be less effective due to the sporadic connectivity as Kindle tablet owners move outside of WiFi network range and so the tablet’s role as a complementary device will be hurt. Despite that minor issue, this is by far the most straightforward option for Amazon.

—If Amazon offers Kindle tablet with an embedded 3G mobile radio: as it does for the Kindle 3 and Apple does with the iPad — then Amazon will have a dilemma of how to price and package mobile data. I’d be very surprised if Amazon was able to emulate the Kindle 3′s data model: a mobile data cost that is hidden from Kindle owners in a slightly higher one-off up front device purchase price. The additional data that on demand movies and a cloud-centric music service require will make this too costly and difficult. If there is a 3G model, Amazon will likely emulate the iPad, with pay as you go data pricing or traditional carrier contracts. I see little advantage for Amazon with that approach, so again, a WiFi-model is the most likely design but is also the least exciting.

—Communication features: will the Kindle tablet have a camera for video chat or an email app? If it lacks either, it re-enforces that Amazon is not choosing to go head to head with Apple. This is a media tablet first and only, unlike the iPad which Apple is positioning as the future successor to the PC in a post-PC world. Amazon’s vision is not about the future of computing. It’s delivering the future of media and media retailing.

After the launch event, I’ll loop back here and update this post.

Please comment below if I’ve missed something or you disagree (or even if you think I’m 100% on target!).

Ian Fogg is a mobile industry analyst, consultant and product manager. He’s a former principal at Forrester Research, research director at Jupiter Research and had previous done marketing and/or product management at Psion, 3/Hutchison and Cable & Wireless Communications. He can be followed on Twitter @ianfogg42. .

Some other stats from his talk:

—There are 3.8 billion mobile users worldwide.

—In terms of media consumption, TV reigns supreme—users spend just over 4 hours a day watching TV. 2 hours and 35 minutes is spent surfing the internet daily. Mobile comes in third at 50 minutes a day, equaling the combined time spent on magazines and newspapers.

—U.S. smartphone penetration is 38 percent, totaling about 90 million users. Penetration rates in western Europe: UK has 42 percent, while Spain comes a close second at 41 percent. Rounding out the top three is Italy at 38 percent. China’s mobile penetration is 57 percent.

—U.S. mobile usage has grown 50 percent.

—Tablet growth is exploding and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) dominates 85 percent marketshare.

The full presentation is available here:

eMarketer: Mobile Marketing Trends And Stats

Follow paidContent Advertising via our live stream and via Twitter, hashtag #pcAds11.

While its search rivals Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) have gone full-force into extending R&D efforts into mobile—and becoming dominant players in the process in areas like mobile operating systems, extending their online products into smartphone controllers—Yahoo has started and stopped (mostly stopped) a number of initiatives that has if anything undermined its credibility in the sector.

Livestand, the company’s digital newsstand for tablets, was due to launch sometime in the first half of this year, but appears still to be a work in progress. Even AOL (NYSE: AOL), more beleaguered than Yahoo, managed to launch its iPad Editions. (Yes, that was current former Yahoo Brad Garlinghouse of pre-Bartz Peanut Butter Manifesto fame, now AOL president of consumer applications, who tweeted: “ding dong the witch is dead” when the Bartz news broke.)

Meanwhile, in mobile advertising, where the company should have been singing, it’s been way out of tune. Stats from IDC show that Yahoo has been losing market share in mobile advertising, even as the market has been booming. Efforts to launch new display ad formats and more localized content may have given a boost to its ad business but the benefits would have only been seen on its own properties, rather than the long tail of wider internet content.

It didn’t help, either, that of the many executives that have left Yahoo under Bartz, several were in mobile—one notable example was Michael Shim, the mobile VP who left for Groupon at the beginning of the year. And David Ko, appointed by Bartz to head mobile in her first major reorg, left for Zynga and a potentially big payoff last year despite an expanded role that made him one of the top execs at Yahoo.

The Yahoo board announced tonight that a new leadership council made up of interim CEO Tim Morse and other top execs will start a strategic review. Chairman Roy Bostock promised a commitment “to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders.” The board also started a new CEO search. Unless each has a strong emphasis on mobile, Yahoo will only slip further behind.

Update: Macquarie’s Ben Schachter ended his client note about the ouster with this:

The bottom line is that while Carol Bartz’s removal is a positive for Yahoo, this remains a company with significant structural problems —not least among them, the ability to find its place in a world that is increasingly accessing the Internet through mobile devices. The fact that Bartz’s final sentence in her final email to Yahoo employees reads, “Sent from my iPad” should not be lost on anyone.

Related

• Updated: Bartz Out At Yahoo
• Yahoo Unveils 'Livestand' Tablet Newsstand And 'Personalized News' Focus
• Yahoo Loses Mobile VP Michael Shim To Groupon
• Yahoo Board Backs CEO Bartz Amid Questions From Testy Shareholders

Exponent already controls several other businesses in the media world, including PR services firm Gorkana, the parenting/motorcycle/outdoor publishers Magicalia, and graduate recruitment publisher gti. It also used to control the Times Educational Supplement. It also has a wide range of other holdings that are quite some distance from publishing—including the Ambassador Theatre Group, Quorn meat substitute and high-end bag and luggage company Radley.

Talks between the BBC and Exponent were first reported back in April of this year.

There are a few layers to the deal reached today:

» Non-BBC branded magazines. These include the oldest of them all (first published in 1923), Radio Times, as well as Olive and Gardens Illustrated. Exponent will be acquiring these in full.

» Magazines aligned to BBC shows. These include titles like Gardeners’ World and BBC Wildlife. Exponent gets full rights to publish these under a licensing deal. BBC says it will retain some involvement: “BBC Worldwide will create a small in-house unit to oversee the management, editorial compliance and contractual relationship between BBC Worldwide and the new company,” the company noted in the release.

» Magazines aligned to “key brands.” These include Top Gear (which is actually a TV show but has spawned a number of other ventures eg on mobile), Good Food and Lonely Planet. These are going to be retained by BBC Worldwide but published by Exponent under contract publishing arrangements.

» Dovetail and Frontline. These are respectively subscriptions fulfillment and distribution houses, and Exponent will be acquiring BBC’s stake in each of them.

» Origin. BBC is also giving full control of specialist publisher Origin to Exponent. (BBC will acquire the 60 percent it does not already own and will pass that on.)

Because the deal already got full approval the BBC Trust in July, the transaction is expected to complete this autumn, pending approval from the Office of Fair Trading.

BBC Magazines staff and operations are all getting transferred to Exponent.

Separately, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd is buying BBC Magazines’ 50% shareholding in Indian joint venture Worldwide Media Ltd.

BBC notes that in the last set of ABC (NYSE: DIS) results from July-December 2010, the circulation of its titles grew by 0.5 percent (which it says is a “best-in-class” figure), with total annual sales now at nearly 85 million copies, with licensed editions of the magazines being published in 60 different markets.

—Crashes. The BBC experienced some “technical issues” from the weight of traffic to the site, which resulted in some people being unable to stream coverage from the site.

So far, there has been no word that the same issue affected YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), which was rebroadcasting the BBC’s feed as part of its official royal channel. Some reports of other sites, such as Twitpic, also buckling under posting pressure.

—Twitter, Facebook: Social networks appeared completely dominated by Royal Wedding chatter during the event, underscoring how this has definitely become one way (or a simultaneous way) of “watching” a live event. Here’s one shot of the trending topics on Twitter, taken at 12:23 Greenwich Mean Time:

—TV on top. Even so, it looks like initial numbers—even those being gathered informally on the Internet itself—confirm that traditional TV was the most-used channel for watching the wedding. A poll on Mashable currently puts TV at 40 percent of all Royal Wedding views, with livestreams at just under 20 percent. Notably, “not at all” was just over 30 percent of all respondents. Multiple screens was six percent.

Despite the number of mobile apps that we’ve seen come out related to the wedding, it looks like mobile played a small role when it came down to the live event. In that Mashable poll, mobile viewers accounted for under two percent of all views.

—More to consume. The official Twitter account of Clarence House, the residence of the Prince of Wales, tweets that all the music from the ceremony will be available for downloading from iTunes. All the programs and other details from the event can also be downloaded from the official site.

—Royal swag? TechCrunch reports that eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) searches for Royal Wedding-related items have grown by 1,815 percent this year, with $70,000 of transactions on 3,000 items in the month of April alone.

The Guardian has a nifty real-time infographic measuring Twitter keyword frequency around the event, which I must say has gotten significantly more random as the event fades into the past.

Related

• A Right Royal Opportunity: The Big Wedding In Digital Media

ESPN (NYSE: DIS) says the mobile version of its ESPNcricinfo site accounted for 45 percent (45 million) of all the brand’s page views during the April 2 final, in which India beat Pakistan Sri Lanka. That’s the highest share of any of the digital media through which ESPN covered the sport, and doesn’t even include the app versions of ESPNcricinfo.

It’s significant that mobile use outweighed desktop use. ESPN claims ESPNcricinfo’s mobile site took 63.6 percent of the global mobile audience in its industry segment - far outweighing the 36.1 percent share ESPNcricinfo claims it took in the desktop web market.

That effect came from Indians, who supplied the largest slice of mobile traffic to ESPNcricinfo (377.3 million page views through the tournament). There are around 700 million mobile phones in use in India - nearly the entire population of 1.15 billion. Many of the handsets are unsophisticated, but broadcasters nevertheless supply subscription audio content. In neighbouring Pakistan, BBC Urdu offered five, two-minute World Cup audio reports every hour for on-demand listening by dial-up during the competition.

July Systems, an LA-based mobile web infrastructure vendor which was contracted by ESPN, SuperSport and other proprietors during the tournament, says it served 74 million mobile page views globally during the final game, over Amazon’s Web Services system.

But, though the region reflected starkly in ESPN’s stats during the tournament, the overall audience for ESPNcricinfo’s mobile site remains small in an all-media context, setting a March 30 record of 1.9 million visitors, compared with 6.5 million on desktop that same day.

The takeaway must be that mobile users kept generating page views by refreshing, but desktop still had more actual unique users.

If the deal is approved by federal regulators—which could take up to a year—AT&T will become the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., leapfrogging over rival Verizon by adding T-Mobile’s 33.7 million subscribers to reach nearly 130 million wireless subscribers. Verizon currently has about 101 million subscribers.

—AT&T’s next steps: It’s been an open secret in the wireless world for a few months now that T-Mobile’s parent company was considering ways to offload the carrier, but most expected T-Mobile to eventually wind up with Sprint despite network integration issues that could have been messy. By hooking up with AT&T, T-Mobile now plans to pursue the LTE path to the so-called 4G wireless networking era, the companies said in the press release.

In addition to the 33.7 million customers, AT&T will also gain access to T-Mobile’s network of cell sites that could help AT&T improve the coverage of its notoriously flaky network. It will have to do the work to eventually upgrade those sites to the LTE standard, as T-Mobile had declared plans as recently as January’s Consumer Electronics Show to pursue a slightly different path to faster wireless speeds based on the HSPA+ technology. But those plans will now be scrapped, it would appear.

AT&T and T-Mobile’s existing networks are both based on the same standards, and both are in the midst of deploying HSPA+ networks. But AT&T also plans to start rolling out LTE-based networks in the middle of this year, which is also the same standard that Verizon and many other wireless carriers around the world are heading toward. If the world coalesced around LTE, and T-Mobile was unable to build such a network on its own, it might have faced trouble down the road in getting access to the latest and greatest smartphones that would probably debut for the largest volume network technology.

—Solving the spectrum problem: Beyond the alphabet soup that characterizes the wireless industry, however, both companies were also facing potential problems with owning enough wireless spectrum to carry their data traffic over the airwaves. In its press release, AT&T said that based on current growth rates, it was going to exhaust the capacity of its existing spectrum before federal regulators opened up new spectrum to carriers. Buying T-Mobile gives it a way to expand those spectrum holdings in the near-term.

AT&T is clearly already worried about the prospect of having to shepherd the deal through government roadblocks, devoting a sizable portion of its press release to addressing concerns about competitiveness in the wireless market and arguing that the deal will allow the company to bring fast wireless data connections to 95 percent of America. It even cited the plan to merge the two companies as important to achieve President Obama’s recent talk about narrowing the digital divide, which likely had eyes rolling from coast to coast on a Sunday afternoon.

Make no mistake: the ripple effects of this deal will be felt in nearly every corner of the mobile market, should it come to pass. While AT&T claimed in its press release that the wireless market has lots of providers from consumers to chose among, in reality, the best phones and best networks only arrive at the current four major carriers, although Metro PCS and U.S. Cellular are becoming much stronger. With that number now being reduced, competition for the latest and greatest phones—and the seemingly requisite two-year contracts that come along with carrier subsidies—seems likely to increase.

—Who’s the biggest loser? Perhaps the biggest loser from the deal will be Sprint, which now faces an uncertain future as its proposed path to 4G networking—WiMax—is extremely rocky. Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR), one of Sprint’s major partners on WiMax technology, is in turmoil after several years of losses and a recent shakeup of its executive roster.

With Sprint and Verizon sharing a common 3G network technology, speculation is now likely to turn toward talks of a merger between those two companies. While that would likely meet with as much regulatory resistance as AT&T and T-Mobile’s proposal, it would give Sprint a path out of its 4G conundrum and allow Verizon to add Sprint’s 50 million customers to once again become the nation’s largest carrier.

Much attention will also be paid to how the deal affects prices for wireless service. T-Mobile had been known for a low-price approach to wireless service combined with strong customer support, two areas in which AT&T is not exactly considered a leader. AT&T tried to get out ahead of this potential issue as well in its release, noting that smaller carriers are competing on price and that even with several large mergers over the last decade of the wireless industry, prices declined 50 percent. As they say, however, past performance doesn’t necessarily indicate future results, and AT&T will have to find a way to keep T-Mobile’s cost-conscious customers on board to avoid losing customers to other carriers.

The deal’s announcement comes just days before the CEOs of all four wireless carriers in the U.S.—Ralph De La Vega of AT&T, Dan Hesse of Sprint, Philip Humm of T-Mobile USA, and Dan Mead of Verizon—are scheduled to participate in a panel at the CTIA Wireless conference in Orlando. Tuesday’s discussion (which we will cover) is likely to be much more interesting now given the proposed merger.

Update: Ina Fried reports that T-Mobile has canceled, citing extenuating work demands.”

Related

• CEO's Memo: Sale Is The 'Best Possible Solution' For T-Mobile USA
• Early Reaction To AT&T-T-Mobile: Bad For Public, Good For Bored Regulators
• Report: Sprint, T-Mobile USA Considering Merger
• Tablets Emerging As A Signifcant Growth Area For AT&T

The news was first announced on Nokia’s blog, in a post co-bylined by Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer, and lays out the details of a “broad strategic partnership”.

Lots of questions that are not answered yet: Microsoft’s Marketplace will be the new app store on the devices, but does that mean Ovi will disappear altogether? What happens to Symbian and MeeGo, Nokia’s existing platforms? And what happens to Microsoft’s other partnerships for devices, such as those with Samsung, HTC and Dell?

The details direct from the blog:

»  Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.

»  Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.

»  Nokia and Microsoft will closely collaborate on development, joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

»  Bing will power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing’s next generation search capabilities. Microsoft adCenter will provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.

»  Nokia Maps will be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience.

»  Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements will make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.

»  Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.

»  Microsoft will continue to invest in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can do more with their phone, across their work and personal lives.

»  Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

Ballmer and Elop note that the finer details of the partnership have yet to be worked out. There is a full strategy day planned today, which should give more detail. MocoNews will be covering it.

In a separate announcement Nokia has outlined the details of its new executive leadership and company structure. We’ve covered it here.

The news comes after weeks of speculation, based on alleged insider leaks, about what Nokia was planning to unveil during its strategy presentation to analysts and investors later today. The rumours regularly alternated between complete management reshuffles; ousting most of Nokia’s old guard in favour of fresh talent and fresh ideas; opting for a new operating system or either all or part of Nokia’s line of smartphones and feature phones using Android or Windows Phone 7; abandoning or keeping existing OS platforms MeeGo and Symbian.

Om Malik, quite rightly, observes that at its heart Nokia is a hardware company. The emergence of software, and the ecosystems that develop around it, as a cornerstone—not the only one, but a significant one—to the future of mobile devices has been a major challenge for the company up to now.
But will today’s announcement really change much? It has to be reiterated that Nokia still has a very large share of the market and that might take a couple of years or more to truly get dire.

Nokia today might have put events into place that will change that. Now all eyes are on the company like never before—if Nokia gets it right, they can nudge that market share needle in the right direction. Getting it wrong could send it into freefall.

Media companies aren’t letting the market’s relative technological immaturity stand in their way - they’re embracing new opportunities using old media

“People are buying $50 phones that can only make a call - so we’ve given that access to all kinds of content on a multimodal number,” the digital VP of News Corp.‘s Star TV, Lalit Bhagia, told Digital Content Monetisation Europe in London on Tuesday.

“(Providers in India) are providing subscription content on voice. People pay half a dollar a month to listen to old movies.” Bhagia calls it “audio cinema”.

“The kinds of stuff that has worked well is converting a two-and-a-half hour Bollywood movie in to 30- to 40-minute audio content which they listen to on the mobile.” The library ranges from classic flicks like Sholay to new releases, with one hour of free listening per month. But it’s not just cinema Indians are subscribing to…

“If you missed your favourite TV show, you can dial a number and listen to your favourite show,” Bhagia said. There are also TV-related contests and an intriguing take on the familiar microblogging…

“Like with Twitter and stuff, the stars leave audio blogs - whether they were catching a taxi, or are on set, or what they’re eating,” Bhagia. Some of the most popular movie personalities count as many as 700,000 to a million subscribers paying to dial up to their latest audio status updates (Ev and Biz, take note).

With nearly 700 million mobile phones in circulation in India - more than TV sets - it’s a significant opportunity, even given the low subscription rates of 20 to 50 cents a month for such a service.

“It’s a crime to limit new media just to laptops and iPads, there’s so much more,” Bhagia told paidContent:UK. “Mobile is already reaching a lot of people that can’t afford a television. For a lot of people, the only means of entertainment is mobile.”

But in overseas markets, Star TV plans to court an international audience of 22 million south Asians with a very digital paid subscription video offering.

“It’s a whole different ballgame, opening up international distribution arrangements (with cable operators),” Bhagia said. “But we now have the possibility to charge them through the internet.”

The new service, Blyk on Aircel, is a variation on the original model: the target age group is now 16-29, and users must already be paying customers in order to pick up the free minutes and texts.

Users who opt in to the service will receive SMS and MMS messages covering different categories such as sports, travel, fashion and gadgets. As users respond to these messages, the service tweaks the content relevant to those responses. After six to eight weeks, users are then sent content “that is tailored to their individual preferences”, and they can also then redeem different rewards such as free airtime.

This model could potentially find more traction in India than the original one did in the UK: Aircel, which is one of the country’s smaller mobile operators (but still has 48 million users) says that 16-29 year-olds, incredibly, make up 51 percent of the Indian market.

Blyk claims that there are already 20 brands signed on for its Aircel deal.

This is the first service to be launched by Blyk outside of Europe, and comes on the back of the company opening an Asia-Pac office in Singapore in October. In May, the company launched a service similar with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) in the Netherlands, which works along the same principles as the Aircel deal, providing free phone minutes (to other Blyk users) and texts in exchange for accepting mobile marketing from Blyk’s partners.

The company in September announced a fourth round of financing, amounting to €17 million ($xX), bringing the company’s total funding to at least €87 million.