Apple is breaking the law of large numbers.

With revenue up 73% in the quarter through December to $46 billion, the tech giant eclipsed analysts’ expectations by an extraordinary $7 billion. The amount by which it beat expectations easily tops the entire quarterly revenue of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.

Thanks to the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple sold 37 million handsets in the quarter. That nearly doubles the company’s previous record for handset-unit sales, set two quarters ago. Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston estimates that Apple’s share of the smartphone market jumped to 25%, up from the previous record of 18% two quarters ago. And last quarter included no sales of the iPhone 4S in China. The model wasn’t released there until this quarter.

Meanwhile, the release of Amazon’s cheaper Kindle Fire tablet didn’t slow the iPad. Apple sold 15.4 million tablets, up 38% from the previous quarter.

Perhaps most amazing, Apple generated $16 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, leaving the company with a cash pile of $97.6 billion. That is larger than the market capitalizations of about 95% of companies in the S&P 500.

Understanding the potential of the iPhone, which was 53% of sales in the December quarter, is key to understanding the potential path for the stock. And it certainly still has room to run. While Apple’s handset now is offered by most carriers in North America and Western Europe, Mr. Mawston notes Apple can still expand distribution in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. There also is China, where the iPhone is only sold through No. 2 carrier China Unicom, which has about 20% share of China’s mobile subscriptions. Larger carrier China Mobile, with nearly 70% share, offers a big opportunity.

However, investors can’t expect the iPhone to officially hit China Mobile shelves soon. Current iPhone models aren’t compatible with its 3G network. China Mobile needs to roll out a next generation LTE network, meanwhile Apple has to release an LTE-enabled model—something expected later this year.

Another limiting factor is the iPhone’s cost. Among the most expensive smartphones in the market, iPhones are typically purchased by those on postpaid calling plans.

Three quarters of the China market, and more of India’s, is comprised of prepaid subscribers. To appeal to these customers, Apple will have to sell a scaled down iPhone that would surely sport lower margins than existing models. Still that would offer an additional opportunity to expand its potential market.

With that still to look forward to, no wonder Apple is the Exxon of mobile. And, following its 8% after-market gain, it again passes the oil major as America’s most valuable company.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article.

Women comprised only 5 percent of directors on the 250 highest-grossing movies last year, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

Netflix Inc probably would like nothing better than to put 2011 behind it. But 2012 may be no walk in the park either.

Investors, who have pushed Netflix shares up 50 percent since late November, believe the company that revolutionized the home video industry may have plugged a torrent of defections after a widely excoriated price hike and a bumbling attempt to hive off its DVD-mail business as “Qwikster.”

But it still faces a deluge of competition, a tarnished brand, and a costly expansion that will erode bottom lines, at least in the short term.

Netflix wants to steer customers away from DVDs and into its streaming business. To do so, it is writing hefty checks to add more movies and TV shows to its online service, and has warned that content costs will nearly double this year. At the same time, Netflix faces the loss of newer movies from Liberty Media Corp’s cable channel Starz at the end of February.

Netflix lost more than 800,000 U.S. customers in the third quarter of 2011 and warned that DVD-by-mail subscriptions would decline sharply in the final three months of the year, triggering the company’s largest single-day share price plunge since 2004. But the company said total U.S. subscribers, which includes customers who pay for the online streaming service, would be “slightly up” for the quarter.

Wall Street remains upbeat about its longer-term prospects – so long as it can navigate its costly international expansion and secure enough content to keep the likes of Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, and Dish Network Corp’s Blockbuster at bay.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article. 

Barely 3 years old, the Los Angeles-based TV arm of indie Entertainment One has made a mark in the network and cable biz by bringing to the table that most precious commodity: financing.

eOne Television, headed by CEO John Morayniss, leverages its heft as a producer and distrib of film, TV and home entertainment fare in Canada, the U.K. and other territories to cobble together coin for TV series in the same way that many indie features are funded, through a combo of foreign pre-sales and advance commitments. It mines the lucrative Canadian system of production incentives and premium license fees given to shows that lense in Canada but also air on a major U.S. network.

This patchwork quilt of funding sources allows the company to offer some series to U.S. networks at a steep discount, often in exchange for big upfront commitments. Its highest-profile series to date has been the adaptation of John Grisham novel “The Firm,” which landed at NBC with a 22-episode order.

The legal ensembler wasn’t that much of a gamble for NBC at a license fee said to be around $1 million, less than what top cablers pay for original drama skeins. Between the coin received from Canada’s Global TV and a big sale to Sony’s suite of AXN-branded international channels covering more than 140 countries, eOne didn’t need big bucks from the U.S. to cover its costs; it needed the outlet to attract name thesps (notably Josh Lucas and Molly Parker) and to ensure the premium license fees from its other partners.

“There’s a proliferation of channels that are hungry for American programming that is a certain genre and tone,” Morayniss said. “When an opportunity comes along get a branded series like ‘The Firm,’ Sony’s AXN came in without the condition of a U.S. sale because they knew we were heavily in this market.”

In many respects, “The Firm” will be an interesting test case for whether the eOne model can survive the big leagues of network primetime. The Big Three have been experimenting with Canadian imports for the past few years, but most of these shows have been relegated to summer runs, as ABC has done with eOne’s cop drama “Rookie Blue.”

“The Firm,” on the other hand, landed a regular-season slot and was touted at NBC’s upfront presentation last May. On the downside, “The Firm” has been mostly panned by domestic critics and got off to a weak start (a 3 share in adults 18-49 weak) in its two-hour premiere Sunday. It will face tough competish in its regular Thursday 10 p.m. berth.

But even if “The Firm” doesn’t go the distance, the eOne model has piqued the interest of the creative community. Indeed, it was Grisham, scribe Lukas Reiter and his reps at CAA that brought the project to eOne after seeing what the company had done with “Rookie Blue” and the Syfy drama “Haven.”

NBC, for one, is negotiating with eOne for a multi-episode commitment to another drama, medical vehicle “Saving Hope,” that has also been ordered by Canada’s CTV. Filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson came to eOne last fall with a concept for a supernatural procedural drama, “The Reel,” that will be shopped overseas long before it seeks a U.S. home.

Timing was everything for eOne’s push to build its U.S. TV business. In fall 2008, the company bought Blueprint Entertainment, the production shingle run by international TV vets Morayniss and Noreen Halpern, who is now eOne’s prexy of drama programming. Morayniss and Halpern had been pursuing the Canadian content/foreign financing model on their own, but the backing of eOne gave them deeper pockets.

Moreover, eOne’s rollup of Blueprint and other TV companies came on the heels of the 2007-08 writers strike, which was the shock to the system that spurred the major nets to look for new and cheaper sources of programming.

“We’d always had a more global approach,” Halpern says. “All of a sudden that coincided with an interest in the U.S. of putting shows together in a different way — bringing financing out of international markets, using the advantage to be able to bring a significant amount of money out of Canada and other countries as a way to do high-end shows for lower license fees.”

This article first appeared on Variety.com.

Now we know Google’s master-plan for integrating Google+ ever more deeply into the Google ecosystem: Pour the whole thing into Google search. Starting today, Google+ members, and to a lesser extent others who are signed into Google, will be able to search against both the broader web and their own Google+ social graph. That’s right; Google+ circles, photos, posts and more will be integrated into search in ways other social platforms can only dream about.

Google calls the search update “ “Search plus Your World.” Jack Menzel, product management director of search, explained that now Google+ members will be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.”

Google calls this access to “your web.” So instead of all the public information that is already available to everyone searching via Google, so you can see information that you posted into Google’s new social network and on some of Google’s other services like Picasa Web.

Menzel explained that starting today, Google+ results will be blended in with the traditional “authoritative results,” but clearly annotated.

It’s a significant blurring of the line between the web as we know it and the web as you and your Circles of friends know it. Google’s Menzel admits, though, that those “your world” results are only as good as the information in the posts and on the photos. Many people post photos with the original JPEG file names. This will not help in the “plus Your World” search as, says Menzel, Google applies the same ranking standards to social graph data as it does to the rest of the web.

The deep integration of Google+ in search does not stop there, though. Google+ profiles will now be a part of the search query box. As long as you’re signed into Google+, Google will try to finish your search query with the most likely in-your-Circles match. Google, in other words, is assuming that you’re looking for someone you know and not just a random person with the same name. Actually, that could be a good bet.

You’ll also see results for public profiles of those you don’t follow or have in any circles. Naturally, the new Google Search will allow you to add them right from the results page. Similarly, when you search for a topic, Google will helpfully return results with “prominent people” who are experts in that topic. Yes, you can follow them direct from the results, as well.

At every turn, if you’re part of Google+. Google’s new search tools will only pull you further in, ensuring that the still young social engine is top of mind. As Google sees it, you’re getting more relevant results, because this is the information and the people you choose to connect with in the first place.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article on Mashable.com.

History Television’s Ice Pilots NWT reality series is sending viewers on an online scavenger hunt to beef up its third-season website.

The digital extension comes courtesy of design studio Switch United, social games producer Pug Pharm Productions and FanTrust.

Using Pug Pharm’s proprietary technology, Vancouver-based Switch United turned the Ice Pilots NWT website into the homepage for Air Hunt, where fans for the TV series are invited to collect hidden cargo by flying around dodging birds, bad weather and other aircraft.

The flight-related mini-game is targeted at the show’s core audience, which consists mainly of men aged 35 to 45. It allows players to collect and manage their virtual cargo and connect with other fans of the History Television show through an in-game email communication system.

Fans also have the opportunity to win weekly prizes and a grand prize trip to Yellowknife to see the stars of the show, says Brian Krenzer, associate creative director, Switch United.

Three weeks into the latest Ice Pilots NWT TV cycle, online fan engagement on Icepilots.com is up, with website page views up 17% and pages per visit up 34%,  Switch United reports.

“We’re delighted that Air Hunt is increasing online engagement, and that fans keep coming back to Icepilots.com to play between episodes,” said Gabriela Schonbach, vice president of Omni Film, and executive producer of Ice Pilots NWT.

Backed by funding from the Bell Fund and the Canadian Media Fund, Switch United developed and launched earlier interactive online extensions for Ice Pilots NWT for the first and second seasons.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article on StrategyOnline.ca 

The Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund has announced funding for the Oct. 1, 2011 round of applications.

Overall, $3.35 million was awarded to 27 applicants in production, low-budget production, development and professional development project categories, out of 50 applications.

Funded projects and productions include: Eat St., Mr. Young, Time Tremors, The Listener, Canada’s Smartest Person, Cross Country Fun Hunt, Vivi, Rock tes bas, The Guide and King.

The list is weighted towards kids programming, as it’s a genre that tends to work best in the new media landscape, says Andra Sheffer, executive director, Bell Fund, adding that 40% of the funded projects are kids- and youth-targeted, 40% are documentaries and 20% are geared to adults.

“With the kids stuff, the [audiences expect online extensions] – they go online and the numbers are fantastic,” she says. “And the documentary [genre], interestingly, is one in which people want to know more. So they go online to research usually, or learn more about the topic. Even one-off documentaries tend to do some really interesting online activity.”

One-off docs have an especially interesting online life, she says.

“We seem to see that those sites often last way longer than the television program, so they will have an audience who are [there] three or four years later because of the topic. It’s quite the opposite of what we expect.”

Four out of seven projects receiving production grants are towards kids and youth, including tween reality series Cross Country Fun Hunt from Apartment 11 Productions, which celebrates the “funnest” places across Canada as recommended and voted on by young viewers and season two of Thunderbird Films’s teen whiz kid show Mr. Young, which will feature complementary digital collector cards, a companion game and an arcade Flash game online.

Funding will also go to Xenophile Media’s Time Tremors transmedia project, which will let players explore the Time Tremors world through a mobile, online and physical Treasure Hunt; and Skywriter Television’s animated project Vivi, which will see Vivi continuing her travels with her grandmother, and Skywriter Media and Entertainment giving young viewers an opportunity to create and share digital memory books through Vivi’s Scrapbook site.

Media Headquarters landed funds for Canada’s Smartest Person, a live televised event to find Canada’s smartest person based on six markers of intelligence that will have social media and mobile app quiz-play options.

Season three of sci-fi drama The Listener from Shaftesbury also made the cut with its online extension, web series, The Listener: Power Switch, which will explore what would happen if main character Toby was without his telepathic powers.

The Guantanamo Trap from The Guantanamo Trap Productions, which follows four people affected by Guantanamo, also received funding. The new media side of the production, My September 11^th, will be a narrative on 9/11 with online video.

Five projects also received low budget grants, including Aboriginal doc series The Guide from Sivumu Northern Productions, which focuses on Inuit mentors working with local community leaders on social issues, and also offers a modular website for finding and interacting with a mentor.

King Film Production II Inc.’s King, season two, also received funding under the low budget grant program, and media component King Season II – Interactive Case Files will be integrated into a Facebook-based social network.

Also under the low budget grant program, preschooler-targeted Minimops, from Yowza Digital Inc. has musical moppets exploring the word in the show, and accompanying musical education mini-games online; the third season of Paperny’s Eat St. and its revamped mobile app; The Carbon Rush from Wide Open Exposure, which looks at the “green-gold” market of carbon trading and its online extensions, which include a carbon market simulation game on the website.

On the French-language side, funded projects include: Rock tes bas from Productions GFP, Mixmania III from Zone3, La Valse des continents from Ideacom international, Fermier urbain from Productions 350 ° and Sedna autour du monde: L’aventure humaine from Glacialis Productions all received production grants. Amazone Films’ Infirmières received a low budget production grant.

iThentic’s Real Therapy Interactive, The Secret Location’s Groj Band and GlassBOX’s Travel + Escape Top Ten all landed development grants.

Organizations receiving professional development funding include Whistler Film Summit Media Lab, Merging + Media Toronto and NUMIX 2012.

Overall, Sheffer says, Bell Fund is seeing project budgets dip slightly, due mainly to the evolving mediascape.

“The good things are that the cost of doing this stuff is going down, and people know what they’re doing now. It just doesn’t cost what it used to cost,” Sheffer tells Playback Daily. “Also, things are being simplified somewhat. We used to encourage probably too much of the fancy bells and whistles and really go all out, and I don’t think those necessarily work in all cases.”

“On the other hand,” she continues, “we’re seeing, I think, more ‘average’ projects. There isn’t that excitement that we used to see with projects where people were trying things and experimenting and doing interesting new things. I think that maybe, the CMF’s requirement that all projects have to have a second platform [is] encouraging some mediocrity.”

The fund has so far this year awarded $12.2 million. View the full list here.

The CRTC has struck a middle path in its reexamination of the controversial and complicated subject of usage-based billing for wholesale Internet services in Canada, rejecting BCE Inc.’s pricing proposal as well as the suggestions of most of the company’s most vocal critics.

While the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has allowed a variation of usage-based billing, despite a public outcry, it has limited the markup that large Internet providers can make by charging smaller wholesale Internet providers for the amount of data their customers download.

The regulator is suggesting a new, capacity-based approach that would see large companies such as BCE sell bandwidth to smaller providers on a monthly basis. The CRTC said this new approach will address issues of dramatically increased bandwidth usage, in an era of online video consumption, while allowing independent Internet service providers (ISPs) to offer competitive rate plans.

“Under the CRTC’s new capacity-based approach, large telephone and cable companies will sell wholesale bandwidth to independent ISPs on a monthly basis,” the regulator said in a release on Tuesday.

“Independent ISPs will have to determine in advance the amount they need to serve their retail customers and then manage network capacity until they are able to purchase more. Alternatively, large companies can continue to charge independent ISPs a flat monthly fee for wholesale access, regardless of how much bandwidth their customers use. Both billing options give independent ISPs the ability to design service plans and charge their own customers as they see fit.”

The so-called usage-based billing, or UBB, issue has been simmering for some time but blew up when the CRTC accepted some changes to how incumbent providers such as Bell sell wholesale Internet service to smaller providers.

Critics of that decision, such as OpenMedia.ca, were hailing the regulator’s decision as a victory on Tuesday.

“While there is easily room for criticism, the CRTC’s decision today should allow independent (Internet service providers) to survive and help them facilitate an unlimited and unmetered Internet for Canadians,” OpenMedia.ca said in a release. “Unfortunately, many Canadians will continue to lack independent, affordable, unmetered Internet access.”

At the same time, one independent ISP said it was “disappointed” with the move.

“The CRTC decision is a step back for consumers. The rates approved by the commission today will make it much harder for independent ISPs to compete,” said Marc Gaudrault, CEO of TekSavvy Solutions Inc.. “This is an unfortunate development for telecommunications competition in Canada.”

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article in The Globe and Mail. 

Hollywood has had enough of the sharp consumer shift toward renting movies through Netflix. Desperate to raise home entertainment profits, studios want people to start buying movies outright again, either digitally or on little silver discs.

Operating revenues in the television broadcasting sector reached $7.1 billion in 2010, up eight per cent from 2009 and the largest annual increase since 2003.

Statistics Canada reports TV advertising revenues grew 9.2 per cent last year to $3.4 billion, close to 2008 revenues, before the economic slowdown.

The agency says that increase comes on the heels of an 8.3 per cent drop in ad revenues in 2009, their first decline in 15 years.

While private conventional television operating revenues rose 8.8 per cent to $2.2 billion in 2010, they remained below their peak in 2007.

Private conventional television posted a profit margin before interest and taxes of 0.2 per cent last year to $5.4 million in profits before interest and taxes, reversing a $113.4-million loss in 2009.

Pay and specialty television continued its upward trend in 2010, with operating revenues increasing 11.1 per cent to $3.5 billion.

This is an excerpt. Click here for the full article on Canadian Business.