Strong Consumer Demand More than Triples Q1 Subscription Growth for TiVo (PDF)
You can listen to the quarterly conference call here.
I’ve been listening to the con call and there are some interesting tidbits:
60-70% of new subscriptions are monthly service.
80% of customers have broadband
60% of customers have home networks
Almost every TiVo Basic user who tried the 45-day TiVo Plus trial ends up subscribing.
New low cost DirecTiVo is being developed jointly with Thomson.
“Close to three million subs by the end of this fiscal year.”
“…an increasing focus on high definition television.”
“While our efforts to secure distribution agreements with cable service providers have been more complex and time consuming than anticipated, we do continue to pursue these opportunities.”
Phasing out up-front licensing and going to royalty based licensing.
They were asked about a digital ready cable box – “Obviously we’ve not announced any plans. It is a very interesting place for us to look and we have spent quite a bit of time in this area. I think in the future we are certainly considering cable ready products although the state of the art in that space is still somewhat in flux. But I think we’re getting pretty close to the point where its real, there’s the FCC mandate, and its embraced by principally television companies, companies who make televisions today, but I think its a natural extension to think of that capability being available in a TiVo-like environment. We’re not ready to make any announcements of anything we’re doing there, but you should know that it is an area that we’re looking at pretty closely.”
TiVo is continuing to push HMO for DTV but nothing to announce yet.
They hinted at a few potential new products – media center style products, digital cable boxes, multi-tuner units, etc.