With one hand, the satellite-TV giant BSkyB is fending off regulatory inquiries into its market dominance; but with the other, it is signing some major deals that are furthering its advances into the content value chain. It is now buying U.K. electronic goods maker Amstrad for £125 million ($254 million). Amstrad supplies BSkyB with around 30 percent of its set-top boxes; conversely, the satellite operator accounts for some 75 percent of Amstrad’s business overall. The Amstrad buy will provide Sky with “an in-house design and development capability, which Sky believes will deliver significant operational and financial benefits and enable the Sky Group,” Sky said in a statement. Amstrad produces a range of devices in addition to set-top boxes, including multimedia phones, so keep an eye on this to see what BSkyB may have up its sleeve.
The deal follows on the heels of another announcement from BSkyB, which is 39.1 percent owned by News Corp. The company formed a joint venture with Sony to provide on-demand content to PSP devices in the U.K. and Ireland. Currently there are some 2.3 million PSP users in the two countries. The JV will have equal board representation from Sony and BSkyB and will focus on audio and video downloads. More details on the service will be released in August, the companies say, but an article on VNUnet notes that apparently Sony is preparing to announce more content deals for the wireless device “in the near future.”
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