Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
It seems that everywhere you turn these days the age old feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys of the personal computing world, Apple and Microsoft, is resurfacing. In this epoch, however, the battlefield is not just desktop computing but online entertainment, whether it be music downloads or high definition video.
Microsoft has already publicly declared its hand in the high definition
video war, lining up firmly behind the Toshiba led HD DVD camp. The
software giant turned games console maker plans to incorporate HD DVD
into its Xbox 360 platform in direct opposition to games console king
and Blu-ray champion Sony.
Meanwhile, Apple has kept a relatively low profile in the building
optical disc war as far as the general consumer public is concerned. In
fact, however, Apple has already declared its hand. Apple is board
member of the Blu-ray Disc Association. This, as others have pointed
out, would suggest very strongly that Blu-ray players will be a feature
of future Macintosh computers.
Apple's support for Blu-ray probably doesn't sit well with Intel, which
supports HD DVD, but given Dell also supports Blu-ray what is the chip
king going to do. Are HD DVD supporters NEC and Toshiba more important
to Intel than Dell and Apple?
Despite Microsoft's overt support for HD DVD, it is notable that so far
its commitment has amounted to little more than words. When a Toshiba
executive put out the claim that Microsoft was planning to release an
Xbox 360 with integrated HD DVD player, Microsoft issued a denial. To
be sure, a plug-in for an external HD DVD player may become available
but that's something quite different from an integrated player.
The difference between Microsoft's commitment to HD DVD and Sony's
adoption of Blu-ray is stark. Sony has laid its cards on the table,
while Microsoft appears to be taking an each way bet - appearing to
support HD DVD but still leaving its the door slightly ajar with Xbox
360.
Apple, which has always been a technology driven company, appears to be
in the Blu-ray camp and, given its once again growing influence in the
home computer market, will, like Sony PlayStation 3, be a critical
driver of Blu-ray going forward.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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