verbindungen zu softbank bestehen...
Softbank eyes local Web TV market
`NEW ERA`: The founder of the Japanese firm said that it was eyeing partnerships with local content providers to venture into the promising new Internet TV market
By Jason Tan
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Nov 12, 2005,Page 10
"With its highly mature broadband infrastructure, Asia will play the main role in the Internet TV era."
Masayoshi San, founder and chief executive of Softbank
Softbank Corp, Japan`s second biggest provider of high-speed Internet services, is set to form a joint venture with Taiwanese content service providers in the near term to tap onto the booming Internet TV market, its founder said yesterday.
"TV stations and broadcasting companies here create good content which is limited to Taiwanese viewers.
Now with Internet TV, they can offer programs to 1 billion Internet users around the globe, which will help create a superstar industry," Masayoshi Son told reporters after delivering a speech in Taipei yesterday.
content on demand
Its Internet TV platform, called TV Bank, will enable viewers to search for and watch content such as foreign films over broadband connections.
The Japanese Internet giant is in discussion with local companies, including TV stations, digital content providers, record companies, broadcasting firms and production houses for possible cooperation. But Son decline to reveal further details.
According to Chinese-language newspapers, Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd (‘䎋) is one of the domestic companies showing a high interest in partnering with Softbank.
The service, which will launch in Japan next spring, will have strategic bases in Tokyo, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul, the paper said.
"The preliminary investments in Taiwan will be small, but it will gradually increase over time," Son said.
He added that Softbank will serve as the hub of Internet TV, and help distribute Taiwanese content to the rest of the world, while bringing overseas content to local viewers.
"With its highly mature broadband infrastructure, Asia will play the main role in the Internet TV era," Son told an audience in a speech given in conjunction with the 2005 Taiwan International Film & TV Expo.
To make the TV Bank platform work, offering free content on an advertisement-based model will be a start, he said, adding that the pay-per-view model will follow afterward as a way of increasing revenues.
Conservative companies which focus only on a domestic audience will not be able to succeed in a blossoming global broadband era, said Son, who has been dubbed the "Bill Gates of the East."