IPTV stuff

Some people expressed interest in the IPTV segment.

- Frost & Sullivan says that "IPTV may not be an immediate success throughout Europe." Given that IPTV launched in Italy in 2001 and has been available in Germany, France, and the UK for several years now, and still less than a million European households used it in 2005, I'd say it already *wasn't* an immediate success. But we still expect it to become a significant part of the DTV market over the next several years.
- Deutsche Telekom has chosen Microsoft to power its T-Online multichannel IPTV offering, launching this summer. I noticed last week at CeBITthat the T-Online demo was running un-branded MSFT software, even though Deutsche Telekom refused to confirm it for me at the time. (See, that's why I should keep up to date on my blog, so I can break cool news.) Today, MSFT spilled the beans.

Note that in the press release, Steve Ballmer is quoted talking about how this service will exist in both Germany and France. Think MSFT is annoyed that the big French IPTV players don't use their technology?