GameStick, which just launched its own Kickstarter pledge drive, aims to deliver a game console on a USB stick-sized dongle that plugs directly into a TV’s HDMI port.

Like Ouya, the device will run on Android and pack 8Gb of storage. But GameStick is much more portable — the $79 stick console is so small that its own gamepad is planned to double as a carry case for the device.

This is not the first time I have seen Android leveraged to surprisingly innovative low-cost services. Two years ago, Vodafone launched a self-contained SIM-toting, Android-powered keyboard that, when plugged in to TVs in Africa, served as a rudimentary internet TV box. In GameStick’s case, the stick will plug in to non-smart TVs, which lack online games, via HDMI, as long as it can be powered over USB via a nearby device.

What is interesting about GameStick is that the initiative is being developed by an outfit that is already one of the dominant interactive TV games software distributors, PlayJam.

PlayJam has long powered simple TV games for pay-TV firms like the U.K.’s BSkyB. Now it has a large library of such titles and is taking them on to the new generation of smart internet TVs, where it stands a greater chance of adoption and claims to already be installed on 50 million sets. With GameStick, PlayJam is launching its own hardware for the first time.

But, whilst GameStick is developed by PlayJam, it won’t only be geared toward simply bringing the same PlayJam service and game library to dumb TV screens. ”It uses the PlayJam backend. The games, however, are drawn from the Android ecosystem – meaning that we are able to bring many of the best mobile games to TV,” PlayJam CEO Jasper Smith tells me.

“It will carry many of the games within the existing PlayJam Network but, importantly, GameStick will be able to run a long list of Android titles. We think Android is big news for the games market.”

Smith says the outfit has identified 250 existing Android titles that will work with the GameStick controller and is working with seven developers to guarantee compatibility. Titles can be added to the stick via its built in WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity accessing GameStick’s own store, from which PlayJam will keep a slice of revenue.

And PlayJam’s Smith wants a thousand GameSticks to bloom. “Whilst we love this device, our play is much bigger,” he says, adding:

“We are making all of the software we have developed (content, UI, billing, leaderboards, analytics, CRM etc) available to any other device manufacturer who wants to create a GameStick- or Ouya-like device. We don’t see ourselves as a hardware company, but as a software company that is trying to encourage change within an industry.  So far, Ouya has not gone down this route – they have a device strategy.”

• QVC last month acquired Oodle’s U.S. operation to beef up its social commerce ambitions (via release).
• Now UK search startup Adzuna says it has made its first acquisition by buying Oodle’s UK “traffic”. That means simply that the oodle.co.uk homepage and its job, property and car categories now redirect to adzuna.co.uk.
• But, in a third arrangement, other Oodle UK categories redirect to Mobiya, the mobile classified advertising outfit with which Oodle had a long-time partnership.

Oodle operated the influential Oodle Marketplace app, for placing classified ads on the social network. Facebook showcased Oodle back in 2009.

The marketplace was operated by Oodle’s U.S. division and so is now under the wing of QVC, which claims Marketplace has over 11 million monthly uniques.

In December, Oodle CEO Craig Donato wrote:

“Last year, we had the good fortune to become profitable and cash flow positive … But we also recognized that we needed to increase our growth rate. And to do that, we needed to expand our focus and capitalize on everything we’ve learned and built around social commerce.”

According to the country’s Entertainment Retailers Association, digital sales reached £1.033 billion, making up more than a quarter of the cross-format total – five percent more than a year ago.

But the association’s headline announcement of digital growth masks what is, in fact, a worrying pattern. Across the formats, UK entertainment retailers shed 12 percent in sales last year, as revenue from music, video and games each dipped.

That means the industry is caught in the classic industry conundrum of swapping analogue dollars for digital pennies.

The ERA reckons (via release):

“Contributory factors included the decision by many music, video and games suppliers not to release key titles during the summer in order to avoid the Olympics, the fact the videogames business is in the lowest point of its format cycle and what is regarded by many as a lacklustre year for releases.”

ERA director Kim Bayley rationale (via release) calls for better content to help troubled retailers like HMV:

“The dearth of attractive releases during summer 2012 was clearly a significant factor. Suppliers need to do more to rebalance their release schedules and improve the quality of their releases. No retailer can afford to pay overheads on a store for 52 weeks of the year if all the key releases are going to be concentrated in the last quarter. And entrepreneurs will think twice about investing in new digital services if releases fail to excite the public. Luckily the message appears to be getting through and we look forward to being able to offer the public a much better release slate in 2013.”

Although gaming is the most lucrative UK digital entertainment sales segment, it grew by half the pace of music and video, which, spurred by new on-demand services, overtook games to become the highest-value segment across digital and physical.

The ERA end-of-year data, comprising Official Charts Company music sales and IHS Screen Digest estimates for video and games, do not include sales of unlimited-access streaming entertainment subscriptions like those offered by Spotify and Netflix.

Separately, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said UK singles sales continued to break records in 2012 thanks to digital downloads, which grew by six percent (by volume but not by revenue) to 188.6 million during the year.

“The final week of 2012 proved to be the year’s record week for digital sales as consumers redeemed their Christmas music vouchers and downloaded more than 1.3m albums and 5.6m singles,” said BPI CEO Geoff Taylor (via release)…

Major Flemish- and French-language newspaper publishers, magazine publishers and three TV broadcasters in the country have teamed to use Media ID, a common platform for user registration and management, reports the national De Morgen.

Created by Flemish government-funded innovation research institute iMinds, which claims to have “mobilized the Flemish media sector on an unprecedented scale”, launch is penciled in for an April test, followed by a September full launch.

Media ID appears primarily to be created for registration, allowing publishers to better understand and profile individual consumers. Publishers in the last couple of years have become more interested in leveraging data about their readers — although services like Facebook, Google  and Twitter let users log in to such third-party sites, those sites do not own all the user data.

But Media ID also supports payment. In keeping with the current global trend, participating media houses will variously begin limiting free access to web content and requiring payment for more of it.

Both Corelio and Persgroep will stop republishing articles from their newspapers online for free. Broadcaster Vlaamse Media Maatschappij will use Media ID to power part of its iWatch catch-up TV service, Pond has confirmed it will use it to charge micropayments for episodes and VRT wants to leverage Media ID to offer viewers customisation but not charges.

Sticking together

Such industry-wide cooperation is more common in some non-English-speaking countries than in markets like the UK, where animosity between intensely competitive publishers reigns and previously scuppered a News Corporation attempt — labeled Project Alesia — to build a common paid digital news aggregator.

We have already seen the Project Piano payment system launch to provide paid access to small parts of publishers sites’ with one bill in Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland, albeit with few indications of large-scale success.

But initiatives like Media ID in Belgium appear to have created consensus in a country that is itself divided between Flemish- and French-speaking regions.

In 2012, Belgian papers launched GoPress, a jointly-owned kiosk for delivering digital editions of newspapers and magazines for individual prices. Media ID would extend their digital payments cooperation to web content.

Google as giver

And the publishers’ recent supposed victory over Google creates the conditions for their increased chance of success.

In 2007, a court ruled that Google did not have the right to run story excerpts Belgian newspapers’ websites. Google duly pulled the newspaper sites’ out of Google News — ironically, much to their chagrin. They later struck an agreement to restore that content in mid-2011 despite ongoing tensions.

But in December the sides reached a new agreement in which Google will pay the publishers €5 million, supposedly through advertising on their properties, in order to settle the dispute. This means that, whilst newspapers’ excerpts will remain accessible on Google News, publishers are monetising their Google relationship on two fronts — both in income from Google and through the traffic that exposure through Google will bring to their soon-to-be-paid websites.

Ironically, however, part of the agreed olive branch was Google’s assistance in powering paywalls and subscription models for the papers — likely using its Google Wallet system. Now it seems the publishers are picking their own vendor.

Its $89.5 million investment values Nook Media at $1.789 billion, the same as when Barnes & Noble span the digital book outfit out in to a separate company in October.

But its comes on the same day Barnes & Noble told Wall Street its holiday sales, announced on January 3, results “will be below expectations and that the Nook business will not meet the company’s prior projection for fiscal year 2013″.

When Barnes & Noble span out Nook, Microsoft invested $300 million for a 17.6 percent stake. Pearson’s announcement today, however, puts Microsoft’s stake at a reduced 16.8 percent. Barnes & Noble’s stake is put at 78.2 percent (down from 82.4 percent).

That is because new equity was issued. Pearson, whose John Fallon (pictured) becomes CEO on January 1, has a further option to buy another five percent later on.

Why is Pearson putting up the money? Its North America CEO Will Ethridge (via announcement) says:

“With this investment, we have entered into a commercial agreement with Nook Media that will allow our two companies to work closely together in order to create a more seamless and effective experience for students. It is another example of our strategy of making our content and services broadly available to students and faculty through a wide range of distribution partners.”

Barnes & Noble says (via announcement):

“Pearson’s strategic investment in Nook Media will accelerate customer access to digital content by pairing its leading expertise in online learning with Nook Media’s expertise in online distribution and customer service. This will facilitate improved discovery of available digital content and services, as well as seamless access.”

Separately, Barnes & Noble adds: “Nook Media and Pearson will be also entering into a commercial agreement with respect to distributing Pearson content.”

In other words, it’s a classic vertical integration play — for the digital age. By owning both content production and a part of retail distribution, Pearson can begin to become more certain about selling its wares — at a time when publishers, in the consumer space, have been pit against all-powerful retailers like Apple and Amazon.

Pearson has previously conceded its printed text book business is challenged, whilst its Penguin book publisher saw ebook sales grew 33 percent during 2012.

However, Pearson’s investment is not solely about digital content. Its announcement notes that Nook Media now also operates Barnes & Noble’s network of 674 booksellers at US college campuses — giving it continuing certainty over the delivery of those printed education books.

For Nook, guaranteeing content supply in the increasingly important education sector could prove positive.

Whilst China’s Twitter clones have flourished, as it approaches its first anniversary, Mail.ru’s Futubra is to be closed. According to a message on the website:

“Every day since launch, we have improved and developed Futubru.Unfortunately, this was not enough for sustainable growth of the project. So, we decided to close the project.

“For us, it was a great experiment, and the knowledge gained in the course of it is extremely valuable. Our team has switched to new projects, which you will hear about in the future.”

Figures for Futubra’s user based are not available. East-West: “Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin had publicly conceded this past July that Futubra’s audience was not meeting expectations.”

What is known is that Grishin and Mail.ru’s largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov are hoping to add to their 39.9 percent stake in leading Russian social network Vkonakte (VK).

“If there is a reasonable market opportunity, we plan to increase our share in Vkontakte. Concrete negotiations are being held on a continuing basis … and we’ll [soon] reach our goals,” Usmanov said last week (via East-West).

“We are interested in acquiring any [additional] stake in Vkontakte. I believe in this company, which will be the phenomenon of the Russian internet.”

Ebook spike

In ebooks, one publisher, Hachette UK, saw 86 percent more global ebooks sales this Christmas Day and Boxing Day than in 2011.

The publisher’s digital head George Walkley tells The Bookseller higher ereader and tablet sales, price promotion and greater digital availability lifted the market, including the long tail: “This is not just a frontlist phenomenon as over 6,500 of our titles saw digital sales in the last two days.”

The growth coincides with new Pew Internet data showing the proportion of Americans who read ebooks to increased 23 percent in 2012, from 16 percent a year ago.

Some independent authors using Kindle Direct Publishing reported far more modest upticks to their already small-scale sales. Their titles are relatively unknown and don’t benefit from bigger-hitting marketing campaigns of the kind that catch new ereader owners’ attention.

Publishers had awaited Christmas with different expectations. Random House COO Madeleine McIntosh told The New York Times: “In the first years (of ebooks), people were getting just e-readers. This year they will be getting multi-functional tablets. You can put a lot of other media besides ebooks on these, and that may somewhat diminish the ultimate focus on ebooks.”

iOS wins?

When it comes to those multi-function devices, Apple’s appear to have won this season. A cursory examination of first tweets sent on Christmas Eve showed the iPad with a 7x greater prevalence than the nearest rival, Amazon’s Kindle Fire…

Game spike

What were people using their new devices for? Some apps have seen Christmas uplifts, too. Temple Run, a game that was previously ranked No. 20 on App Store, leaped to lead the store’s free and top-grossing charts, BGR reports.

Mobile data outfit Flurry reports a threefold hike in numbers of new tablets and smartphones activated on Christmas Day, which this year also smashed previous seasonal activation records.

App downloads grew by more than double compared with previous Christmases, Flurry found.

Now there is also a gloomy outlook for portable audio players, with consumer retail research outfit Mintel (via Telegraph) seeing MP3 players shedding 22 percent in 2012 UK sales revenue.

The common thread — consumers are now replacing these dedicated single-function devices with multi-function smartphones or tablets at an accelerating rate.

What once was, itself, a mono-functional device for making calls has become a Swiss Army knife for communication, entertainment and more. In fact, as Telegraph Media Group executive editor Edward Roussel comments:

Mobile phones: The term is anachronistic. They are the "remote controls" of our lives. on.wsj.com/Vr2JfT via @WSJ—
  (@edwardroussel) December 27, 2012

Mintel forecasts MP3 player sales halving again to £177 million by 2017. But it also sees a “worst-case” scenario of their revenue diminishing to just £25 million — that is £356 million less than Mintel’s 2012 sales estimate.

If it’s any consolation, this pace of decline — at least, for now — is less than that predicted by IHS iSuppli for ereaders.

A quarter of consumers polled by Mintel said they will buy a smartphone instead of a portable media player in future.

Ofcom’s recent annual International Communications Market Research report shows how smartphones are the handheld devices most commonly used to access the internet…

This year, we saw the emergence of a mobile-first digital ecosystem, with many services beginning to report greater consumption on mobile than desktop devices. But Ofcom’s data shows computers are still the device on which people most frequently use the internet…

We have recognized that fact for some years now — but France’s lead is getting greater and greater. Now over a quarter of French homes’ primary TV sets receives an IPTV service, according to IDATE and other data crunched by U.K. communications regulator Ofcom’s International Communications Market Report 2012.

That compares with a measly five percent in the U.S. and below one percent in the U.K.

Why is France forging ahead? The relative slow adoption elsewhere is “due in part to the challenges of gaining a foothold in the face of a range of well-established competing digital platforms,” Ofcom said.

That is, many countries beside France already have strong broadcasting ecosystems with major pay-TV operators offering a multitude of content. In France, pay-TV only began over digital networks, which support wider choice, in 2005. But most French ADSL providers offer digital TV through internet-enabled set-top boxes.

Non-Francophones should not fret, however. The French may have more IPTV-enabled main sets — but that doesn’t mean they use internet video more than the rest of us.

According to Ofcom research, only 13 percent of French consumers use the internet to watch TV on a weekly basis. That’s less than 17 percent in the U.S. and almost half as many as do so in the world-beating U.K.

Says Ofcom: “This is probably driven by the popularity in the U.K. of internet TV catch-up services from the free-to-air broadcasters, such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD and ITV Player.”

The gap between France’s leading IPTV penetration and the U.K.’s leading internet TV viewing habit is explained by the relative higher attractiveness of actual internet broadcast content, and because many British viewers are using the web, not TV, to watch internet TV.

As adoption of internet-connected TVs grows, much of that consumption is likely to move from the desktop to the big screen. But whether actual French consumption of internet video grows in lock-step remains to be seen…

AllThingsD reported that the Yahoo CEO is doing due diligence to acquire the app created by 17-year-old London developer Nick D’Aloisio — and we understand the report is correct. The new Yahoo CEO is personally pushing for the deal, but the deal is nowhere close to being wrapped up. The word in Silicon Valley is that one of Summly’s backer’s, actor Ashton Kutcher, is talking up the company. The long stable of angel investors has helped hype up the app, and it is those connections that have helped it land on Apple’s “top apps of the year” list.

Such a deal would cap a remarkable year for the schoolkid. In late October, D’Aloisio launched the app, which employs natural language processing algorithms to summarise news stories for mobile consumption, to a chorus of press adulation that chimed right in with the U.K. governments’ current initiatives to kickstart technology entrepreneurship. Already, it is listed amongst Apple’s best apps of 2012.

But what exactly is Yahoo buying — and is this a good idea anyway? The technology of the company was developed by SRI, the technical giant that helped develop the Siri technology as well. The company is pretty thinly staffed. At the same time, we understand D’Aloisio, who had been on sabbatical from his studies, is due to return to school. That could either rule out his ongoing association with the service — or make him one of the few small-business CEOs to be serving earn-out on acquisition while still studying for exams.

While developing Summly in June, D’Aloisio told GigaOM he would like to continue studying toward a degree in philosophy, politics and economics one day: “I still enjoy being among friends and in that school environment, and so, if there’s a compromise where I can be running the company a few days a week and also at school, as long as I can be eligible for university still, I think, I’m more than happy to commit a lot of my time right now.”

What’s the value in Summly anyway? The app brings mobile design thinking to news content in a pleasing, native interface — an idea that has been crying out to be realized. But that execution sometimes feels like it has plenty a way to go. Some story summaries produced by Summly are mangled, robotic in tone.

And many in news media will see Summly as trying to solve a problem that does not exist. All journalism schools teach reporters how to write news stories whose own intros summarise the article adequately. If stories are not written in this way, it is either because news media are themselves falling down, or because creators are consciously trying to present articles more creatively, perhaps in the form of features.

For Yahoo, however, a mobile-first product that does effectively deliver news to users can only be an effective addition, as its CEO looks to turn the company around (again) — this time, with a recognition that the desktop portal world has moved on.

In the week that it relaunched Flickr’s iPhone app, Yahoo looks to be making a quick decision to buy an unfinished product that nevertheless has a lot of potential. If it gets the idea, perhaps it can set its own engineers to work on refining the app, whether D’Aloisio stays aboard or not.