So, anyway, one of my few complaints with Android is the browser. Not that it is really lacking in any significant way, just that it isn’t Chrome. We already know Chrome can run on Android, Google TV uses Chrome on Android. And we know ‘desktop’ browsers work in general as Motorola has Firefox in their ‘webtop’ app on the Atrix. There’s also Firefox Mobile and Opera for Android, which are closely related to the desktop kin. As a Chrome user on the desktop, I’ve really wanted Chrome on my phone, complete with extensions, etc. And it never really made much sense to me that the Android browser was a different codebase.

Well, apparently Google is finally bringing everything together. They’re bringing the Android browser into the WebKit fold – Chrome is based on WebKit. ‘Browser’, as it is simply named, has always been based on WebKit, but it has long since been divorced from the core project. That meant that changes in WebKit couldn’t be directly brought into Browser, and vice-versa. That’s finally coming to an end, as the Android Browser finally shares enough code with the Chromium branch of WebKit (the open source basis for Chrome) that it can be based directly on that branch. That should benefit all around as enhancements to one can be easily shared with the other.

As reported by CNET News, Google stated:

The Android Browser and Chrome already share a lot of code, such as the same WebKit rendering engine, V8 JavaScript engine, and HTTP [Hypertext Transfer Protocol] stack. We expect them to continue to share more code over time and have actually started harmonizing our efforts so that Google will have just one port of WebKit to maintain. Beyond that, we have nothing further to share at this time.

WebKit is the success that Mozilla’s Gecko always aspired to be but never quite was – the basis for many major browsers. WebKit started out as a port of the KHTML engine from the KDE Linux project for Apple’s Safari browser. Now it serves as the heart of Safari, Chrome, Android Browser, RIM’s mobile browsers, the WebOS browser, Samsung’s Bada browser, the web browser for Symbian S60, the Amazon Kindle browser, and many others – even Valve’s Steam uses WebKit. So the more developers sharing enhancements with each other, the better for all of us.

I’m looking forward to Chrome on Android.

Via CNET News.

The press release cites 750,000 customers for Insight, the discrepancy is probably explained by different counting methods – the NCTA is concerned only with video, while data and voice customers are counted in the higher figure. The PR states Insight is“serving approximately 537,000 high-speed data subscribers, 679,000 video subscribers and 297,000 voice subscribers”.

I think we’ll see continuing consolidation in the MVPD space given the gulf between the top four MVPDs and fifth place Cox at 4,899,000 with numbers dropping by roughly a million for every two spots on the list, until it is under a million after twelfth place Mediacom at 1,175,000. With broadband content access, OTT content, mobile apps, etc., all becoming important competitive offerings the larger providers, with economy of scale on their side, will have an easier time of it. I think this will put pressure on the mid-sized MSOs to merge with peers or acquire smaller MSOs to boost their userbase, and for the smaller MSOs to look for a buyout.

Time will tell.

(#6 Charter, #11 Suddenlink, and #16 RCN are the three MSOs who’ve committed to using TiVo hardware.)

Via CNET News.

While that is indeed a significant rebound for HD DVD, remember that for the week ending January 5th, which is mostly before Warner’s announcement late on the 4th, the split was 51:49 in favor of Blu-ray. This shows a shift in standalone player sales from roughly 1:1 to nearly 2:1, despite massive price cuts on HD DVD players. Toshiba has cut the MSRP of their entry level players in half – $299.99 to $149.99 for the HD-A3 and $399.99 to $199.99 for the HD-A30, as well as cutting the HD-A35 from $499.99 to $299.99, and they’re still significantly down in market share. This is bad news for HD DVD. They’ve been claiming that price will be the deciding factor, that consumers will flock to HD DVD players due to the lower pricing. However, during the holiday season, before the price cuts, Blu-ray managed to take more than half the market for standalone player sales – despite being more expensive. And now, despite Toshiba’s deep price cuts, Blu-ray has actually increased their market share without any real marketing efforts.

I realize that a few weeks of data doesn’t determine a long term trend, but there really isn’t a positive spin for HD DVD here. Sure, they regained some market share from the previous week, but that was expected. Note that these figures do not include the PlayStation3 or the Xbox 360 add-on drive, which would skew things even more for BD. (The PS3 is problematic since there is no way to know how many are used as Blu-ray players – more than none, less than all.) Even with a near equal split in standalone player sales HD DVD was losing the war, with media sales skewed strongly toward BD – 2:1 in the US and even more elsewhere. If BD sustains a strong lead in player sales that split will only increase.

Toshiba is trying to buy marker share with subsidized players. They were subsidizing HD DVD player sales before the price cuts, now those subsidizes must have increased dramatically to cover the dramatic drop in MSRP. And this is taking its toll on Toshiba’s bottom line. They’ve just posted a 25% drop in quarterly operating profit. The majority of this drop was due to a drop in market prices for flash memory chips, but some of it is also due to losses in their HD DVD business. As CNET News reports:

Toshiba, whose products range from washing machines to nuclear power plants, is also fighting losses in its HD DVD player business, he said, without detailing the size of the loss.

Toshiba slashed prices on its players by 40 to 50 percent after Time Warner’s Warner Bros. studio announced this month that it would release high-definition DVDs only in rival Sony’s Blu-ray format.

Toshiba’s tactic of buying market share with subsidies isn’t working, and hasn’t been working for several months. Despite a price advantage, HD DVD was unable to sustain the standalone player sales lead it formerly held over BD. And that gap continues to increase, quite dramatically these past couple of weeks. Toshiba’s subsidies have likely had the side effect of keeping other vendors out of the HD DVD market – it is tough to compete profitably when the main vendor in the market is selling products at a loss. Why would someone by a Venturer HD DVD player when the Toshiba is less?

What moves do HD DVD and Toshiba have left – aside from a Super Bowl ad? Their price advantage hasn’t worked. Increasing the gap with price cuts couldn’t turn the tide, it just reduced the losses. They’ve lost studio support and over the coming months the imbalance in releases will grow. Right now HD DVD’s pending releases are few and far between when compared to Blu-ray, and it gets worse once Warner turns off the HD DVD tap. So content isn’t going to drive sales. I suppose Toshiba could start giving away the HD DVD players for free. Even I’d take one for free, they do upscale DVDs decently.

On a somewhat related note, Sony is getting aggressive in Germany. They’re offering a trade-in deal on their BDP-S300 Blu-ray player for owners of HD DVD players. Trade-in your HD DVD player at German retailer Saturn and get €150 off the €499 BDP-S300. This deal is only available at Saturn stores in Germany. Picked up from HiFi Forum via Blu-ray.com. As Blu-ray.com points out, overall high-def player adoption in Germany is much lower than in the US. So offering this kind of deal there will cost Sony much less than it would here, so we’re probably not going to see a similar deal. Though it would be nice.