Strategic Moves Related to Broadband Diffusion on the French VoD and TV Market - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 250

Table 6. Partnerships in the French VoD industry (Source Daidj & Vialle (2007))

Telecom operators/ADSL operators

Partnerships with Broadcast TV (Arte, TF1, France Télévisions),
aggregators (Zooloo Kids) and content providers (Warner Bros)

France Telecom (Orange)

Neuf Cegetel Partnerships with Glowria (platform) and TF1 Vision (content)

Alice Partnership with VirginMega (platform)

Content aggregators
Vodeo

Partnerships with other service providers (e.g. Noos)

Retailers
FNAC Partnership with Glowria (replacing Moviesystem)

Glowria Partnerships with several service providers

Search engines and portals

Partnerships with producers (Endemol), TV challens (i>TELE,
Eurosports, Canal J, Filles TV) and Music majors (Sony and EMI)

MSN

Google Partnerships with INA, CanalPlay, Vodeo, Arte

Yahoo Partnerships with Dailymotion, TV5, INA, Vodeo

The Emerging Competitive
Convergence Dimension

From Packaging (TV) to
VoD Service Provision

One significant impact of the diffusion of IPTV
systems is the progressive emergence of a com-
petitive convergence situation. This phenomenon
is accelerated by the blurring of borders between
services, because of innovation such as Subscrip-
tion VoD (SVoD), and Catch-up TV. Major play-
ers on the French market have made significant
strategic moves, in particular by incorporating or
developing new activities in stages of the value-
chain different than the ones they were initially
positioned on.
VoD therefore exemplifies a second stage of
convergence in which players do not remain on
their initial resources and competences bundle due
to strong information asymmetries. Players from
the various industries have become more familiar
with other companies' business by interacting
with them for the production and marketing of
new services. We present here some significant
strategic moves.

A first type of strategic move observed on the
French market is TV companies, located on the
“TV packaging” or “TV edition” stage of the value
chain, moving to another packaging position as a
VoD service provider, by acquisition or develop-
ment (Figure 1). The case of Canal+ is particularly
representative of this type of strategic move.

Canal+

The first historical strategic move has been the
acquisition of Moviesystem by Canal+, which
marks the start of a strategic waltz between major
players. In May 2004, Moviesystem was bought
by Canal+ group, the main French Pay-TV com-
pany and changed its brand names (Moviesystem
and NetCiné) to CanalPlay, which proved to be a
mixed blessing. On the one hand, its business could
benefit from the resources of a large company and
from various synergy opportunities, however, on
the other hand, it was losing the advantage of being
an independent player on the market.