Credit: John Gress Media Inc/Shutterstock
Apple is expected to unveil its ambitions in streaming video on Monday and take on the two heavyweights in the sector, Netflix and Amazon, while waiting for the Hollywood giants, Disney and WarnerMedia, to throw themselves into the battle. Here are the players who are counting on this booming market:
Netflix
Netflix dominates streaming video with 140 million paid subscribers in 190 countries and territories. Netflix is “Stranger Things”, “House of Cards” or “The Crown”, and while he grew up broadcasting other people’s series and movies, he has been investing huge amounts of money in his own production for several years. Some analysts also point out that Netflix’s Achilles’ heel lies in its dependence on outside production.
Hulu
At the end of 2018, Hulu had some 25 million subscribers to its various subscriptions, some of which (the cheapest) cut programmes with advertising. In addition to very popular in-house series, including “The Scarlet Maid”, Hulu also offers the opportunity to see and review hit TV series and extremely popular shows, such as “The Voice”, produced by its shareholders (Disney 60%, NBCUniversal 30% and AT&T 10%, via WarnerMedia). But it is precisely this shareholding that raises questions about Hulu’s future, as each of these powerful shareholders is in the process of launching its own streaming service.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon does not disclose the number of its Prime Video subscribers, but the service can potentially be used by all of its Prime subscribers in more than a dozen countries. Like Netflix, Amazon could be deprived of some of the catalogue of major production studios that are launching their own streaming services, but, like Netflix, Amazon spends a lot on original series and movies, including the multi-award-winning “Manchester by the Sea”.
Disney+
The long-awaited streaming service from Disney, the world’s leading media and entertainment company, is expected to be launched this year. His acquisition of the majority of the assets of the 21st Century Fox Group adds to his own studios and ABC’s television programming. Disney+ will de facto have a catalogue that is as full as it is prestigious, including, in addition to the famous Disney cartoons, “Star Wars” and Marvel superheroes. According to some analysts, Disney’s strike force should enable it to rival or even surpass Netflix within a few years. However, the group will have to demonstrate that it can partly convert to subscription streaming, a completely different business model from its historical one.
WarnerMedia
The telecom giant AT&T, which has completed its acquisition of Time Warner and renamed it WarnerMedia, also intends to start streaming this year by relying on a very rich catalogue, both from Warner studios and from the channel with the mythical HBO hits (“Game of Thrones”, “The Sopranos”, etc.), but also from the Turner channels. For the moment, we don’t know what the group, which has the rights to series such as “Friends” or the Looney Tunes cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Titi and Grominet…), intends to do for its titles broadcast by Netflix or Amazon.
NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal (Comcast Group) is planning to embark on the adventure in 2020 and the group is betting on a very different way from Netflix to monetize its services. Rather than charging a monthly subscription fee of fifteen dollars, it could be inspired by what Hulu is doing by combining a low-cost subscription with advertisements. These could be all the more lucrative since, like Google or
Close-up image of coder typing on computer.
Qwarry, which specialises in contextual data advertising targeting, raises 2 million euros from Normandie Participations, West Web Valley, Apicap and Crédit Agricole Innove in Normandy.
Founded in 2019 by Geoffrey Berthon and Julie Walther, Qwarry develops a cookie-free advertising targeting solution. The startup uses semantic data to enable advertisers to deliver ads that are targeted and relevant to the content the user is consuming. The Normandy company states that it does not collect private data such as user ID, age, gender, location or e-mail address. On the other hand, Qwarry is interested in the semantics of the websites that users visit to enable advertisers to establish their strategy. Based on a deep learning algorithm, Qwarry’s solution allows you to adjust an ad according to the keywords in it.
The weight of the RGPD
“Semantics allows us to offer unique targeting because the advertising message is inserted based on content read in real time by Internet users and not on data previously collected about them,” describes Julie Walther. The startup hopes to be at the forefront if companies are forced to permanently delete their cookies in order to offer them a new solution. It should be noted that the DPGR requires that cookies be used only with the consent of the targeted user and that its model extends internationally.
In view of the latest recommendations of the CNIL concerning advertising cookies, Qwarry hopes to anticipate the needs of companies who wish to follow these recommendations. As part of this levy, the startup aims to open an R&D center in Caen and plans to recruit 30 employees there. “We will accelerate our development and offer advertisers, publishers and media agencies the opportunity to use Qwarry’s semantic data directly within their ownadvertising tools,” commented Geoffrey Berthon.
Qwarry: key data
Founder: Geoffrey Berthon and Julie Walther
Created: 2019
Head office:Paris
Sector:AdTech
Activity:contextual data advertising targeting solution
Financing: 2 million euros in February 2020 from Normandie Participations, West Web Valley, Apicap and Crédit Agricole Innove in Normandy.
Journalist at FW – DECODE MEDIA To contact the editorial staff: [email protected]
Credit: Starling Bank.
Starling Bank is raising £60 million or nearly €71 million from Merian Global Investors and the JTC Group, both historical investors in the neobank. This fund raising would bring the total funding for the company to £323 million.
Launched in 2014 by Anne Boden, ex-COO of Allied Irish Banks (AIB), Starling Bank has developed a mobile application offering a variety of banking services for both individuals and businesses. Users can view their account balance in real time, make standard transfers, execute international payments, instantly deactivate or reactivate their credit card, or send money to friends from their phonebook.
Strong European competition
Starling Bank’s services don’t stop there, as the neobank analyses user data via machine learning algorithms to adapt to their needs, for example by alerting the user when they have spent a lot of money over a certain period of time. By applying an open banking system (or “open banking system”), the startup also offers its customers the possibility of making transactions more fluid and faster, although it may share their data with other banking services, subject to their consent.
Since the launch of its application, Starling Bank claims 1.25 million accounts created and over £1.25 billion in deposits. Having opened offices in London, Southampton, Cardiff and Dublin, Starling Bank is more than ever looking to expand further in Europe. Indeed, the startup’s expansion objectives were momentarily thwarted by the uncertainties associated with Brexit.
However, in the neobank market, Starling Bank will have to face much more advanced European players, such as the British company Revolut, which, with its 8 million customers, now dreams of winning 100 million customers and raising 1.5 billion euros, or the German startup N26, which has raised 470 million dollars in 2019.
Starling Bank: key data
Founder:Anne Boden
Founding: 2014
Head office:London
Sector:FinTech
Activity:mobile banking
Competitors: Revolut, N26, Monzo…
Financing: EUR 71 million from Merian Global Investors and the JTC Group in February 2020, EUR 35 million in October 2019, EUR 85 million in February 2019 .
Assiya Berrima
Journalist at FW – DECODE MEDIA To contact the editorial staff: [email protected]
All means are good to avoid the spread of coronavirus (even drones)… and to dust off the first movie in history (even the 4K). It might seem like science fiction just a few hours after the Oscars (bravo Joaquin Phoenix and Brad Pitt!), but this is the real world. Joseph Postec tells you everything in this new episode of Wild Card.
For the time of a podcast, Joseph Postec leaves his camera to take his cap as a columnist. In less than five minutes, he decodes his selection of Tech news to give you a pungent analysis in a podcast, not without humour.
Check out the other Decode Media programs
- Decode Business:follow the players who are making news in the Tech
- Decode Exit: how does a business transfer take place? Find out what’s behind the sales of startups
- Decode VC: discover the best investors, their vision, their practices
- Decode CTO: discover the CTOs of the best French Tech startups and companies
- Decode HR: discover the most inspiring HR Directors and their best practices
- Decode of the week: Richard Menneveux and his guests decipher Tech news around the world.
- Wild Card :our sniper Joseph Postec shares his view on Tech news in an offbeat tone
- Silicon Carne: Valley news as seen by Carlos Diaz and his guests
Credit: Frenchweb
New DECODE with Cédric O, Secretary of State in charge of digital technology, to draw up an overall assessment of French Tech since its launch eight years ago. While he notes the dynamism of all the players, he is keen to remain clear-sighted about the reality of the market if tomorrow it is the major French startups that do M&A For the time being, “we are condemned to see foreigners buying up our startups”.
In front of Richard Menneveux, the founder of Decode Media, Cédric O explains the highlights of his first year as Secretary of State for Digital Technology and his ambition to position France as the leading European tech company ahead of Germany and the UK. It is also an opportunity to discuss the construction of a financing ecosystem through the issue of buybacks. Cédric O also mentioned the GAFA tax, the digital transformation of the State and the digital divide. Quantum as the next technological breakthrough and cybersecurity were also discussed during this interview.
With Richard Menneveux (@rMen), founder and CEO of Decode Media.
Discover the other Decode Media programs
- Decode Business:follow the players who are making news in the Tech
- Decode VC: discover the best investors, their vision, their practices
- Decode CTO: discover the CTOs of the best French Tech startups and companies
- Decode HR: discover the most inspiring HR Directors and their best practices
- Decode of the week: Richard Menneveux and his guests decipher Tech news around the world.
- Wild Card :our sniper Joseph Postec shares his view on Tech news in an offbeat tone
- Silicon Carne: Valley news as seen by Carlos Diaz and his guests
Benoît Dageville and Thierry Cruanes, the founders of Snowflake. Credit: Snowflake.
The cloud and big data are constantly reaching new heights, and Snowflake is not going to complain. Proof of this is that the Franco-American unicorn has just completed a new $479 million financing round. This G Series was led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Salesforce Ventures, the venture capital fund of the CRM software specialist. On this occasion, the American giant has formed a partnership with Snowflake, the outlines of which will be unveiled next June at the Snowflake Summit, the annual conference of the Californian start-up.
The historical investors, namely Sequoia, Altimeter Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Madrona Venture Group, Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, also participated in the transaction. This brings the company’s valuation to $12.4 billion, more than triple the previous one. Indeed, in its $450 million financing round in October 2018, the Franco-American unicorn was valued at $3.9 billion.
On the way to Wall Street?
Founded by two Frenchmen, Benoît Dageville and Thierry Cruanes, two former Oracle employees, with the support of Marcin Zukowski, the start-up specializes in the implementation of a virtual data warehouse (cloud data warehouse) that allows customers to extract indicators and simplified analyses on large stored volumes. Concretely, the company has developed a platform that allows the centralization of a company’s data, whether structured or not, so that teams can extract the main material from it to get an overview of the performance achieved and make forecasts for example.
Snowflake is positioning itself in a very flourishing market, as more and more companies are opting for a multi-cloud approach. In this context, the start-up is working to facilitate the movement of data between the main cloud platforms. Thus, Snowflake’s offer is deployed on the cloud infrastructures of Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Although the Franco-American unicorn appears to be a competitor of these industry giants, it is also one of the main customers of Amazon, which nevertheless offers Redshift, an offer similar to that of Snowflake.
This round of financing and the alliance with Salesforce should enable the company to consolidate its position in the cloud data warehouse market. This also puts the company in the best possible position before taking its first steps on Wall Street. Snowflake has appointed Frank Slootman as CEO. He led ServiceNow, another cloud computing company, to a stock market listing. To date, Snowflake claims 3,400 customers, including Accor, JetBlue, Netflix, Electronic Arts and Monoprix.
Snowflake: key data
Founders:Benoît Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Zukowski
Founded:2012
Head office:San Mateo (USA)
Sector: Cloud
Activity:centralized data storage
Funding: $,479 million in February 2020, $450 million in October 2018 .
Maxence Fabrion
Journalist at FW – DECODE MEDIAPo contact the editorial staff: [email protected]
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