Just a bunch of fun logos…

Imagine having ubiquituous wireless broadband connection to your Archos, streaming videos from anywhere not only on WiFi hotspots, integrated Voice-over-IP, an open applications platform (perhaps with some Google Android compatibillity), remote personal video recorder program guide control and ArchosLink synchronisation, instant global access to all the music of the world streaming through a service like unlimited Last.fm (currently available ad-supported in the USA, UK and Germany), full ubiquituous access to the Archos Content Portal, to your personal collection of files stored on your personal server or on a p2p file storage service such as http://wua.la.

This is not to be available yet, and Archos doesn’t seem to have a device they want to show yet. But the deal is now signed with the first HSDPA 3G+ provider to cover all Archos HSDPA consumers in France. HSDPA 3G+ providers in other countries could come next: Three? Deutshe Telekom? Telefonica? Swisscom? Vodafone?.. Consider the partner could appeal to HSDPA providers who did not sign with Apple yet, who would be seeking a better hardware and business model alternative…

So far, the official date is “before the end of 2008″. This could mean that the product starts to be unveiled soon, and released later, so the unveiling could perhaps come a bit before an eventual 3G iPhone release, by the time Google Android, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia and Nokia’s successor to the N810 are going to be released later this year.

A HSDPA Dock for the Gen 5 is not mentionned by Archos so far, but it would be nice, so that Gen 5 owners can get access to the ubiquituous multimedia in the pocket experience. VOIP was not mentionned eigther, and eventual subsidy of the hardware cost for content and data service subscriptions can only be assumed will be part of this deal.

Archos has not yet released many of the features of the Archos Gen 5 wishlist: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=5046. Such promised features as the HD Plugin, Webradios and the FM Remote Control are still expected by the Archos Gen 5 Fans. And an open SDK policy by Archos as a reaction to the hacking activity would be a nice move by Archos if they have got the ressources to bring all these things to the already released product generations. So we are still waiting for official announcements and actions by Archos on these features.

Sources: http://www.lesmobiles.com/actualite/3413-sfr-signe-un-accord-de-partenariat-avec-archos.html

http://www.tekit.fr/breve-sfr-et-archos-partenaires,4074.html

This could be the release of the revolutionary Archos HSDPA product that has been in preparation at the Archos R&D labs for three years.

It could be the unveiling of the product and its functionalities with or without the partnership announcements partnering with different HSDPA network providers in different countries. Rumors are it could be SFR for the HSDPA service in France. My guess or my hope is for Three of Hutchinson-Wampoa to be a partner for the UK, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Hong Kong and Denmark. Deutche Telekom could handle HSDPA service for Germany and the USA as T-Mobile.

Archos could release a product with a sim card slot for HSDPA service, still hopefully also keep the WiFi connectivity. And sell the device as is without the necessary HSDPA service plan included, so you could buy it and use any HSDPA sim card with it from any service provider in your country of your choice. http://3.dk for example in Denmark is providing a monthly 299kr (= 40€ or $58) HSDPA access plan with up to 7.2mbit/s download speed and 348kbit/s upload speed with a monthly bandwidth usage limit set at 10GB. I am very much a fan of this type of HSDPA plan. The question is, are those HSDPA networks ready to support a potentially massive usage of streaming video at high bitrates by a lot of customers who would be fascinated by this revolutionary technology.

Possible business plans:

- Archos has started selling the 605 WiFi 4GB with the DVR Station Gen5 for 1€ in France, with a 24-month 19€ per month non-cumulable content subscription to watching movies in the Archos Content Portal. Archos could very well simply use this exact same subsidizing deal to market the HSDPA powered Archos product in cooperation with the HSDPA provider who also wants to get a fair share of the overall potential product, add-ons, subsidizing, content and bandwidth revenues.

- Archos could do like Amazon does with the Kindle on the EV-DO network in the USA. They could sell the HSDPA powered device with or without a subscription that subsidizes the entry price of the bundle with the DVR Station Gen5, and subsequently charging for use of external bandwidth for browsing the Internet, downloading and streaming files that are not part of the content portal. As for the files on the Archos Content Portal, the bandwidth required to transfer those could thus be covered by the transaction required to access that content. So for example the bandwidth could be unlimited basically for streaming commercial content from the content portal, as well as the streaming that is going on might not be in full DVD quality, since that content might be re-encoded to lower bitrates and resolution suitable to view on the LCD, and suitable to save as much as possible on the HSDPA bandwidth usage. So there could be a special version of the Content Portal automatically switching depending on the HSDPA or WiFi connection being used.

- Archos could release a HSDPA Dock for all 605 WiFi users and a HSDPA firmware update to have the exact same features but in a slightly bulkier product than the product that will have the HSDPA module built-in.

I believe the HSDPA connectivity could be absolutely revolutionizing for the history of Archos in terms of the mass market appeal the product could subsequently have. Archos CEO Henri Crohas has previously hinted that making a cell phone was not a priority, but what Archos could bring with this product for the first time also is voice-over-IP on HSDPA. Which could help sell this product as a little free worldwide calling machine. “Get free worldwide phone calls”, “Use Skype”, Instant Messaging. Gmail in your pocket, remotely access and control your Archos TV+, remotely access your whole film and music file collection streamed over the Internet using a software like Orb or using an FTP server on NAS drives in your home if you have a decent upload speed, free unlimited music streaming from a built-in Flash 9 based Last.fm personalized music discovery service and on-demand music streaming and downloading over HSDPA and WiFi.

Basically, I think that the possibilities become endless with such a HSDPA product and I have been waiting for it for years. Now I am just hoping that the HSDPA providers will be enthusiastic to give such possibilities to their customers using their 3G networks which they often invested so much money in acquiring licenses for and for which they mostly haven’t yet found the ways to recoup on their investments. So hopefully many HSDPA providers will want to try to do it this way, agree to let people use VOIP on it, agree to leave the WiFi on it, agree that it supports all those codecs, resolutions and bitrates, agree to let people access any content they want over the Internet. And so many other Worlds Firsts that this device would bring. This would I also think make the Flash based Archos more usable to still have access basically to a huge music and movies collection be it your personal collection simply streamed over the Internet from online storage or from your home storage or to every single piece of music and every single movie and TV show streamed on-demand from the Internet legally from services such as the new Last.fm and an equivalent for free unlimited streaming video access.

Thanks to cajl at jbmm.fr for the tip.

SamY from the forum got off the phone with an Archos customer service person who said that there is a firmware update coming up later this month with Flash 9 support. This might also bring some Opera browser improvements (faster scrolling and more) and perhaps it will close the hacker vulnerability hopefully with some official statement on the possibility of the release of a software development kit.

What Flash 9 support could bring is compatibility with more video portals such as http://vids.myspace.com, http://metacafe.com, http://sevenload.com, http://vpod.tv - Streaming Flash video sites such as http://mogulus.com, http://ustream.tv and http://justin.tv might also work. More Flash Games could possibly work with this, required might possibly not only be that the Flash version support would be upgraded to version 9, but also that displaying of flash content in the browser better use hardware acceleration. Flash based streaming music services such as http://last.fm might also start to work with such an update.

This rumor was posted in this thread: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=11800

Cliff Edwards from Businessweek reports from CES:

The Archos TV+ is a piece of equipment that houses a hard drive and connects to the television to record shows and download movies, either directly or from a network connection to a home pc, from services such as CinemaNow and Amazon Unbox.

Archos says the box will be updated later to record in HD

I think he meant to report that Archos says the box will be updated later to playback HD content.

Faster scrolling in the browser, smoother zooming, new overlay layers to some of the Interfaces to speed up the browsing experience, faster browsing, better widgets support. All this is coming up on Archos devices soon with the new Opera 9.5 SDK for devices which Archos has said they want be the first to implement. This could be in the form of a firmware update for the 605 and 705 WiFi. Hopes for new or better features that this will bring among others in the firmware features wishlist is that this new Opera SDK also hopefully brings Google Gears support so Widgets, the Archos Content Portal and certain Web 2.0 sites could run faster and work also while offline.

At least some faster browsing experience will be very much welcomed, faster rendering of sites that have a lot of javascripts and images. We are looking forward to more details from Archos as to when they plan to implement this improved Opera browser support, if it will be as a firmware update to the 605 and 705 WiFi, exactly which kinds of improvements it will bring and when we can expect it.

Press release:

Opera Software has released Opera 9.5 SDK for Devices which Archos is going to be one of the first to use. The release will include a new beta visual effects layer that will give users an emotionally heightened Web experience with fluid transitions, panning, zooming and interactivity.

With Opera 10 already underway, the next edition of Opera’s SDK will include upgrades to features available with today’s release as well as the final version of the visual effects layer and Opera Zoom.

Source: http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/embedded/15653/opera-introduces-opera-9-5-sdk-devices

In the latest investors update, Archos is confirming that their next development will be to release a HSDPA powered Archos device in collaboration with HSDPA service providers. They are also planing to phase out Mp3 players and players that are not connected to the Internet, such as the 105, 204 and 405.

These are the features which I expect from the HSDPA device, which Archos could perhaps announce at CES on January 5-11th in Las Vegas, to fit the announcement nicely just before the MacWorld, but I guess that Archos might prefer to not show it yet since it might also still be in development to integrate advanced features such as:

- VOIP if not able to convince Skype to work with them, then SIP for sure,
- GPS or somekind of mobile antenna triangulation for providing positionning services
- A more compact form factor (smaller buttons on each side of the touch-screen)
- Google Android integration for access to Android apps on HSDPA,
- WiFi should also still stay (deals can thus only be with HSDPA providers that allow WiFi and VOIP),
- Device for 1€ with a 6-12-24 month 20€ per month subscription to the Archos Content Portal and to services such as VOIP-out,
- More VOD content providers including services that provide film and music subscriptions for unlimited access to all content, possible content providers for the Content Portal in the EU, in Asia and in the USA such as Circuit City, Best Buy, WalMart, Amazon and Vongo.
- Better VOD integration, easier than through current HTML and Javascript navigation to get access to the whole web’s video content,
- Powerful Social Networking integration layers in more than just Widgets such as “Party Finder”, “Sports Meetup”, “Politics Meetup”, “Dating”, Facebook apps, Instant Messaging, Chat, Twitter/Jaiku, Open Social with GPS and more..
- Archos needs a deal with Nintendo for legal pay-per-game access to all NES and SNES games through emulation, requires buttons are on each side of the screen to provide a usable interface for gaming.

Hopefully that all current 605 WiFi owners will also have access to all these HSDPA features through firmware updates and the possible availabillity of a new HSDPA Dock that would look a bit like the Battery Dock, and comes to add HSDPA connectivity to the 5th generation. Although the next generation Archos device with built-in HSDPA will be the more compact and better optimized solution.

How soon will this device be officially unveiled and be launched around the world? I wouldn’t be able to know exactly, it may be unveiled as soon as CES, and it may not be released for many months, but I think Archos has been working on 3G integration for more than a year already, so perhaps the technology is about to be ready for them by now.

Perhaps the only barrier to launching would be interesting bandwidth deals with the established HSDPA providers that exist today in most countries. I think Archos may do it a little bit like Amazon does it with the Kindle on EV-DO. Provide the machine for an attractive price with a 20€ content subscription and the HSDPA bandwidth being included since the money to pay for that bandwidth is included in the price of the VOD content. That does require that HSDPA bandwidth will be sufficient to support video streaming, so perhaps there will be lower bitrate versions of some videos optimized for HSDPA delivery from certain VOD stores, while I guess streaming Flash video bitrates at around 300kbit/s should be ok for using on HSDPA today. Thus for access to free content, there would be a prepaid per-100mb bandwidth fee, 1€ or less per 100mb, perhaps even 1€ per GB, if that can cover HSDPA bandwidth costs, then that would make this business model very attractive.

Perhaps Echostar’s vision includes using Archos as the portable terminal to use the 700mhz wireless broadband. Echostar definitely needs a broadband infrastructure to distribute video-on-demand to not be dependant on the established broadband Internet providers.

I’d like to see Echostar and Google team up to make sure they can outbid AT&T and Verizon.

Then they can also get the same spectrum in Europe to guarantee an open and free wireless broadband access to everyone in the world.

He says Archos is better than the iPod and the Zune, at least that’s what I understood of what he says in the latest Cranky Geeks episode 92 at http://www.crankygeeks.com/2007/11/episode_92_amazons_kindleyay_o.php

The Google Open Source Program Manager mentions Archos at about 19 minutes into the episode.

We should say though that he is not “into the loop” at Google, it’s not like anything he says has got to do with what Google is going to do. He isn’t saying that Google is going to buy Archos or anything like that. Although it would be awesome to see Google Gears implemented on the Archos 605 WiFi, to support faster Google Widgets, such as being able to use an optimized offline-enabled version of Gmail, Google Reader and Google Docs. Chris DiBona is just talking as an open source Linux fan, not representing Google, also he reviewed the Irex Iliad as an e-ink reader.

Not also is this in any way an indication that Archos might be interested to use Google Android on future HSDPA enabled Archos players.

Following is speculation on my part:

Normally both Best Buy and Circuit City will carry the 605 WiFi this Christmas season in the USA:

http://acp.archos.com/portal/hpc/circuitcity/hpc.html

http://acp.archos.com/portal/hpc/bestbuy/hpc.html

Those Archos Content Portal pages don’t mean the deals are signed yet, but they most probably imply that Archos USA must be trying to get the shelve space necessary before Christmas in all those big stores in the USA, also counting on being able to ship satisfactory stock cause big stores like best Buy and Circuit City probably hate it if there isn’t enough stock delivered on time to meet demand if the demand will grow quickly. Hopefully also that Wal-Mart will provide shelve space as well as the content on the Archos Content Portal.

It’s all up to the big retailer to be convinced by Archos USA to sign interesting deals. Getting low margins and maybe even selling the hardware at a loss, while earning margins on accessories, plugins and especially on signing customers up for 12-month or 24-month subscriptions on their online content portals. For example, any of Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart could basically give out the 605 WiFi 4GB for less then 99 dollars when the customer signs a 24-month contract at 9 dollars per month subscription for unlimited films and music access through the Archos Content Portal. But since this would be a kind of a large commitment, it might take a bit of convincing of the representatives of those big retailers and content providers. Since some might or might not be stocking the new iPods, they may want to push an alternative to the iPod/iTunes this Christmas, and if Archos can satisfy the demand with sufficient deliveries, then some of those big retailers might want to try that strategy out this Christmas.

It’s all up to the content providers to have attractive subscription deals for music and movies in the USA. If any content provider in the USA wants to market this kind of unlimited access to movies and music for a fixed monthly fee, then the Archos Content Portal will support it today. So combine a monthly subscription with a 12-month or 24-month contract, and you’ve got margins that lets the partner sell the 605 WiFi hardware subsidized to make it even more attractive then the 199 dollar 4GB price.

This is how I see (remember, I have absolutely no official information about this pricing model actually being in consideration by any of Archos or it’s retailer/content partners) the 605 WiFi becoming the americans favourite christmas present:

605 WiFi 4GB + 12-month $10 unlimited music/movies subscription contract = $100
605 WiFi 4GB + 24-month $10 unlimited music/movies subscription contract = $1

605 WiFi 30GB + 12-month $10 unlimited music/movies subscription contract = $150
605 WiFi 30GB + 24-month $10 unlimited music/movies subscription contract = $50

605 WiFi 160GB + 12-month $10 unlimited music/movies subscription contract = $250
605 WiFi 160GB + 24-month $10 unlimited music/movies subscription contract = $150

and so on.. I think though that the unlimited could have a little exception saying that if the movie or music in question has been released less than 3 months prior, then it might cost an additionnal for example $2 per movie or $2 per album to get access to. So the unlimited access could be limited to all content that is older then 3 months. In the contract, there could be a $100 or $200 cancellation fee depending if the user still has less then 12-month or less then 24-month left in the contract.