From: TURTLEHARD on Agora - IFE Contracts
Well let me first say, since I haven't commented on any of it yet, I think the PR's so far this week have been borderline insulting. There is plenty of Putnamese in them. I'm feeling very uneasy about CES.....not necessarily about EDIG.....but I was looking for more concrete info.....but hey the show isn't over yet right.
Anyway I was feeling this way so I decided to do a little DD and see what I could find to make me feel better. Well I called APS and spoke to Ray. Here are the highlights of what he told me.
Alaska Airlines Exclusivity ends in less than 30 days. So I assume Jan 31st, he may have even said the end of the month exactly but I don't remember, all I remember is less than 30 days.
Currently the player is available on 24 flights daily.
They are finally working through logistical problems with the players. Mainly, cleaning recharging, etc.....they hired some company to take care of it, Rockwell something or other. They also adjusted the carrying bag sizes, it was originally 1 bag of 10 now its 2 bags of 5........all in all, normal startup issues.......but nothing, technical etc so I was very happy.
There are three studios involved now............Fox, Buena Vista (Disney), and Time Warner.
As far as a Full Rollout, its not a question of if, merely a question of when, they need to finalize a price that both can agree on so they both make money. Not a bad problem again.
Now you may be reading this going, yeah well none of that is really new, you told us all this the last time you reported back about calling them. Well here is the JUICY STUFF!!!!!!!!!
There are 3 signed contracts for Rollout, NOT BETA ROLLOUT! They said just the other day they finished a beta test of some sort on one of them. Now my mouth started to water so I decided to ask him about size. I asked bigger or smaller than Alaska. He said, 1 is a smaller airline.......the other two are to quote him ''Much much bigger''. So whoever has that list of airline sizes needs to look up that food chain from Alaska and see what names we have. He also said they are very close to signing with a company that flies corporate jets.
Then I asked about what other things were going on, Amtrak greyhound etc. He said they have received calls from the military, and get this, Bill was supposed to fly to Singapore this week to meet with a cab company over there. But instead he went out to CES because there are some airlines with booths at the show.
Now when I asked about will they be announcing this stuff etc etc........he said he didn't really think so because they have basically zero incentive because they are a private company. Instead he said we would DEFINTELY hear from the airlines. Which in my mind is better anyway! But he said there would be some exciting things in the next few weeks regarding the product.
Almost forgot, asked him if he saw the new Microsoft player as a challenge he said no because that as well as all the other things on the market are open systems. So they will never be able to get Hollywood backing.
Also asked about the wireless email and Internet features that other IFE systems have.........he said that it would be addressed in the next version, which is in the works. So then I asked if this new version was part of the 3 rollouts, he said no, its been mentioned to them as a future upgrade.
So although........now 1/8/04 at 3:40pm CES is a bust. The show isn't' over, and even if it is, we only have less than 4 weeks to wait for info on the Digiplayer.
