Telecom, which serves as TiVo's exclusive distributor in New Zealand, said today that sales so far have been disappointing.Some insiders say as few as 1500 units have been sold since TiVo's October launch.At Telecom's quarterly result briefing this mornin
Telecom, which serves as TiVo’s exclusive distributor in New Zealand, said today that sales so far have been disappointing.
Some insiders say as few as 1500 units have been sold since TiVo's October launch.
At Telecom’s quarterly result briefing this morning, Telecom Retail chief executive Alan Gourdie told NBR that sales of TiVo boxes so far have been “modest”.
“We set some quite high targets for Christmas that we didn't deliver,” said Mr Gourdie.
Telecom will now try to drive the product harder.
TiVo boxes allow a viewer to receive broadcast TV on the Freeview HD platform, and also download on-demand movies, music and TV shows via a broadband connection (with unmetered data, if they are on Telecom Broadband).
Two handicaps
While living up to its reputation for user-friendliness, TiVo continues to be dogged by two handicaps in New Zealand: only a handful of new release movies available for its on-demand movie service, and Sky TV’s continued refusal to supply listings for Prime.
The license for TiVo in Australasia is held by Hybrid Television Services, two-thirds owned by Seven Media and one-third by TVNZ (a stake bought for $A8 million last year).
120,000 sales target
Hybrid has a long standing policy of not commenting on unit sales beyond its modest prediction at launch that it would sell 120,000 TiVo boxes during the service’s first five years in New Zealand.
Despite TiVo’s slow sales so far, the wider universe of Freeview HD set-top boxes, tuners and TVs continues to expand, yesterday hitting 22% population penetration, or 346,000 households.
