Google TV making push into the EU – Motorola Mobility Purchase Die Another Day

For every sin, I'll have to pay

I've come to work, I've come to play

I think I'll find another way

It's not my time to go

Excerpt from the Madonna soundtrack for the James Bond Movie Die Another Day

Looks like I was right on the money in my article on the Google purchase of Motorola Mobility on the Geezam Blog entitled “Google Acquires Motorola Mobility – Weapon of Choice in the IP and Set-Top Box Wars” folks! Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility was only partially about acquiring a war chest of seventeen thousand (17,000) plus patents or advancing their interests into the hardware side of the smartphone business.

It was really about advancing Google TV, their lackluster IPTV Set-Top Box platform that Hollywood has snubbed, scared off by Google’s lack of guarantee of content infringement protection. Motorola’s expertise in Set-Top Box gear should re-engender trust with Hollywood bigwigs.

Signs were apparent when Google announced a SDK (Software Development Kit) for Google TV to work with Google Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread as per the article “Android developers can start writing Google TV apps”, published AUGUST 22, 2011 3:26 PM PDT By Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Deep Tech.

This as Google’s Eric Schmidt has announced on Friday August 26^th 2011AD at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland that they are launching Google TV in the First Quarter of 2012AD as state in the article “Schmidt says Google TV heading to Europe”, published AUGUST 27, 2011 4:30 PM PDT By Edward Moyer, CNET News - Digital Media.

Please note this is the sanitized news as presented by CNET News Editor Edward Moyer. The REAL source of the News is a lot more bluntly expressed in the Reuters article entitled “UPDATE 2-Google TV to launch in Europe next year” published Friday August 26, 2011 7:31pm EDT By Georgina Prodhan, Reuters. As blunt as was my assertion: Google realizes that Television is just too big an arena to ignore, hence their push towards the EU after the Hollywood blocking content streaming to their Set-Top Boxes.

Telco 2.0/STL Partners analyst Keith McMahon is blunt as the British can get but expresses it best, quote: “If his ambition was to go there and convince the TV people he wasn't a big threat, I don't think he achieved it. The message I got was that TV is such a big market that Google can't ignore it. They're never going to give it up.”.

This forced their partner-in-crime, Logitech, to drop the price of their Set-Top Box, the Logictech Revue to US$99 as stated in the article “Five reasons why you should buy the $99 Google TV”, published August 1, 2011, 3:00pm PT by Janko Roettgers, GigaOM as nobody was buying their Set-Top Box platform with blocked or inaccessible content.

Roku is still the IPTV streaming Set-Top Box darling while Apple’s iTV, a “hobby” of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, is quietly doing testing, only recently discovering, to their surprise, that people prefer to buy programs, even at higher prices as opposed to renting them for US$0.99 as per the article “Apple cancels iTunes TV rentals” published August 26, 2011, 2:40pm PT By Erica Ogg, GigaOM. 

Please note that these are not the only IPTV Streaming Set-Top Boxes, just the most profilic of the lot. This as the profit margins are better for streaming than regular Pay TV, as per the statistics of Strategy Analytics as shown below when Video on Demand (Pay-TV) is compared to Broadband Services offered by these Triple Play Providers:

Thus Silicon Valley, despite their technical prowess is very much in the dark as to what customers want. Meanwhile Television’s future among the Triple Play Providers both in the US of A and Jamaica appears to be increasing tied to Broadband Internet as stated in the article Forget TV — broadband is the future of cable, published August 26, 2011, 10:40am PT By Ryan Lawler, GigaOM.

Not to mention threatened by IPTV Service Providers such a Netflix, now with expansionist plans including Latin America as stated in my blog article entitled “Netflix coming to Latin America - Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer”. Google TV is thus following suit, as Netflix also has plans to conquer the EU. Although Netflix is an IPTV Services Provider, Google TV’s desire to be both the IPTV Set-Top Box and IPTV Service Provider indicates their ambitious is dominance of this as yet untamed frontier, now with the technical expertise of Motorola Mobility in their back pocket.

Prognosis to the Triple Play Providers: Follow the example of Triple Play Provider ComCast 1GBps XFinity and Triple Play Provider FLOW 300MBps upgrade coming this Fourth Quarter of 2011AD and adopt a IPTV Streaming Platform strategy to counter the growing threat of IPTV. Free-to-Air Broadcasters both American and Jamaican need to go DVB-H urgently as well, inclusive of interactive Red Button Service to make Television more like Radio as per my blog article entitled “Traditional News Media vs Broadband Telecoms - GigaOM's Avoiding ELE After Deep Impact”.

This as IPTV is using the Telecoms Providers and Triple Play Providers OWN Broadband access against them as stated in my blog article entitled “FLOW goes 3D HDTV as Netflix cometh - XFinity follow-on indicates Streaming's Deep Impact” as Google TV has decided to Die Another Day (2002).