Michel de Guilhermier's Blog

1er Pas en VOD ! Excitant !

Tiens, hier midi je déjeunais avec mon ami Mihai Crasneanu, fondateur et CEO de Glowria, n°1 français de la location de DVD online, et qui prend maintenant le virage de la video à la demande (VOD) de façon accélérée.

2 ans plus tôt, je lui prédisais au même endroit que le marché de la location de DVD ne prendrait vraiment son essor qu'avec l'arrivée de la VOD.

Quoi de plus simple en effet pour le consommateur ? Il est devant sa télé, confortablement assis dans son fauteuil avec sa télécommande, il appuie sur quelques touches, et hop, il se visionne le film qu'il souhaite. Même pas à sortir sa carte bleue, il est débité sur la facture de son provider à la fin de mois.

Une telle facilité de consommation ne peut que créer un mass market. Pour le parallèle, le jour d'ailleurs où le consommateur pourra créer très facilement ses livres photo, ca fera exploser la demande, car le produit est intrinsèquement fantastique (surtout ceux de Photoways !). Mais le temps passé aujourd'hui à réaliser un livre reste un vrai frein.

Avec ma nouvelle LiveBox et l'offre d'Orange, et bien c'est cette nuit que je me suis visualisé mon premier film VOD. 4€ le film, c'est le même prix que le video club d'à côté, mais j'ai pas à me déplacer 2 fois, et je ne risque pas des pénalités si j'oublie de ramener le DVD. Mêmes fonctionnalités, on peut aller en arrière et en avant, faire un arrêt sur image, et visualisation illimitée pendant 24h...

La VOD c'est vraiment un nouveau monde. Ca me fait penser à mon 1er appareil numérique (le QuickTake d'Apple en 1994 !), qui me permettait quelque part de prendre le contrôle des photos, instantanément, sans intermédiaire. La, c'est pareil, le consommateur prend le contrôle des videos qui défilent sous ses yeux, très facilement, instantanément. Il choisit, il ne subit pas ce qu'on lui impose. Il est assez aisé de comprendre que ce service doit exploser...

MAJ le 9/2 à 18h30 : merci à Isabelle qui par le biais d'un commentaire nous a fait connaître son site  expert en VOD !

Apple's Movie Download : $1M in First Week !

What a start !

More than 125,000 Disney movies, worth a million dollars, were downloaded during the first week of the new iTunes Store !

Disney is the first and only movie studio to offer its backing to Apple in providing an initial 75 movies. But with such a start, I have no doubt Apple will successfully sign other studios before year end.

It sounds like Apple has a true winner in its hands.

Now that Apple stock has hit $75, what's next ? Well, I forecast $100 in the next 6 months. But careful, the volatility of Apple stock demands strong iron nerves ! Buy and stand by it !

About Disney movies, the sequel of Pirates of the Caribbean, "Dead's Man Chest" has now climbed to the 3rd spot in all time best grossing movies. See IMDB here.

Video on Demand, Upgraded iPods, Nano, Shuffle, but no 6G ! Cool New and Key Stuff Ahead However

Some pretty cool anouncements, though one (little) disapointment !

As widely anticipated, Apple yesterday evening introduced Video on Demand on its iTunes Store (no more "music" store) with movies from Disney, Pixar, Miramax and Touchstone. Only available in the US so far and catalog is minimal with 75 movies, but will expand overtime.

While the news in itself was rather a "no news", movie pricing was the topic which interested me most. As forecasted, new movies will be priced at $14,99 and library ones at $9,99. But Apple also introduced a little commercial gimmick : in the 1st week of release, or when pre-ordered, new movies will be at $12,99 ! This is very shrewd ! Not only it serves as an elasticity test to show where the bulk of the market is (I'm convinced it is not at $14,99), but it will also accelerate throughput of new movies.

By the way, "Cars", the most recent Pixar movie, is now already available in pre-order !

I also said last saturday I was dubious about a new iPod 6G with a supposedly 16/9 screen, and indeed it didn't show up, that's the only little disapointment ! But as a kind of compensation Steve presented upgraded 5Gs (60% brighter screen with higher resolution, better autonomy, 80Go), upgraded Nanos (thiner, several colors, a 8Go model) and introduced a brand new form factor 1 Go Shuffle (pretty cute). The whole iPod product range has thereforee been refreshed.

The big surprise (to me at least), and what I consider a big piece, came from the announcement of a future new device, dubbed iTV, which should be introduced sometimes early 2007 at a price tag of $299 ! iTV is a wireless box to send movies from the computer to the TV set ! Pretty cool, that's the missing sync to bridge the gap between the living room TV and the computer where movies are downloaded. And it's only when movies can be seen on the big screen that market can really expand.

Jobs also announced downloadable video games such as "Tetris" or "Bejeweled", that have been designed specifically for the latest video-iPod models. Kind of competing against Mathieu and Boonty ?

Last, little nicety of iTunes 7, the content of an iPod may be transfered to 2 different computers (without any hacking !).

Just for the fun of it, the big surprise is that Steve Jobs was wearing a brown shirt !

Pour Apple Expo : VPod.tv !

Rodrigo a créer un bloc spécifique pour couvrir Apple Expo : vous le trouverez ICI.

Amazon Beats Apple by a Few Days ! The Battle for Video Rental/Purchase over the Internet Starts !

On thursday night, Amazon launched its movie download service, dubbed "Unbox", a few days before Apple announces they will expand the popular iTunes digital store to include a similar service ("It's Show Time" on the 12th).

Amazon's movie rentals will run $2,99 to $3,99; purchases $7,99 to $14,99; TV programs will run $1,99 per episode. Amazon has cut deals wit seven major studios - Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros, Lionsgate and Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Anybody's missing ? How about Disney ? Guess with whom they shall work ? 

There's big limitation to Amazon's service : customers must play the movie on a Windows PC or on one of a handful of Windows Media- compatible portable players. The downloaded movies cannot be burned onto DVDs for playback on generic DVD players, used in home entertainment systems, or on portable DVD players popular with air travelers. Nor of course will the content be playable on Apple's iconic iPod portable digital player.

So, even if Amazon has announced Unbox a few days before Apple's event, there is still a wide market opportunity for Apple to offer a full-featured service.

But video purchase/rental over the Internet will surely not limit to an Amazon/Apple fight. Microsoft and Sony, among others, will sooner or later join the battle and for sure the studios will try as much as possible to avoid the dominance of any one platform, such as what has happened in the music download business with Apple cornering 75% of the market.

Apple to Launch Movie Rental Service !

Here it comes, at last, or so it very much seems !

Speculation of Apple adding full-length movies to its iTunes Music Store have swirled for several months, but rumors have gained momentum yesterday after the company sent invitations to the media, saying "It's showtime" next week. The event will take place in San Francisco on the 12th.

As a consequence, the stock gained close to 5% ysterday tuesday, still climbing up in after hours trading.

At close to 72$ (3 month high), my 75$ target is now just an inch away and will be broken anytime soon. Let's remember that the stock was at 52$ only mid July, at a time when I explained it was severely undervalued and was set for quick growth.

Glowria et la VOD, Apple !

Interviewé par un Rodrigo toujours aussi pro et incisif, avec ses sempiternelles premières questions "tu t'appelles comment ?", "on est ou là ?", mon ami Mihai Crasneanu, CEO de Glowria, leader français de la location en ligne de DVD, ne parle finalement plus que de VOD ! C'est ICI.

Tout à fait en ligne avec la grande tendance "Video Unlimited" que nous vivons actuellement.

Je me rappelle encore d'une discussion avec Mihai il y a un peu plus de 1 an, quand je lui prédisais que seule la VOD pouvait faire exploser son business en France. Il m'avait alors répondu que ce n'est pas avant de nombreuses années que cela allait émerger. Bon, bien finalement ça va plus vite que ça !

Tiens, à propos de VOD, il se confirme qu'Apple entrera bientôt dans la danse ! Il sera bientôt possible de louer des films via l'iTMS. Il va y avoir du  monde sur ce segment ! En France, Apple devait lutter dans la musique en ligne contre la Fnac et Virgin, et dans la VOD Canal Plus est déja un solide leader (avec CanalPlay).

Tiens, il est 6h du mat et tout le monde dort encore, si j'allais me visionner un DVD !?