Disney has been looking into selling or partnering with its internet and TV businesses in India

Two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday that private equity firm Blackstone has held early talks with Walt Disney about acquiring a stake in the entertainment company’s Indian arm.

Blackstone is the latest contender for Disney’s assets in the highly competitive Indian market, where the company has been looking for a sale or a joint venture partner for its digital and television businesses.

Disney and Blackstone declined to comment.

According to one of the sources, Blackstone-backed US media firm Candle Media, created by former Disney executives, initiated discussions between the two sides last week.

The conversations were initially reported on Wednesday by the Indian publication The Economic Times. According to Bloomberg News, Disney has also had conversations with Indian billionaires Gautam Adani and Sun TV Network owner Kalanithi Maran.

With subscriber exits on the rise, Disney has attempted to resurrect its streaming business in India by giving free cricket on cellphones, thinking that the tactic will enhance advertising revenue.

Meanwhile, it has lost streaming rights to Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s broadcasting unit for certain key cricket tournaments, including the Indian Premier League and the national cricket team’s bilateral matches.

In an effort to reduce password sharing in the crucial market, it was reported in July that Disney’s India streaming service Disney+ Hotstar planned to begin imposing a rule that would permit its premium members to login from just four devices.

Netflix, a competitor of Disney, began informing its users in more than 100 countries in May that they would have to pay more if they wanted to share the service with individuals outside of their home.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that developing artificial intelligence required computational power, or servers, as well as data to train the software

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, claimed on Monday that tech titans were vying for the massive amounts of information needed to teach artificial intelligence. He also claimed that Google was securing content through pricey and exclusive arrangements with publishers.

In the first significant antitrust case the US has brought since it sued Microsoft in 1998, Nadella, the CEO of rival tech giant Microsoft, testified that the tech giants’ efforts to create content libraries to train their large language models “reminds me of the early phases of distribution deals.”

The US Justice Department’s antitrust battle against Google centres on distribution agreements. According to the authorities, Google, which controls about 90% of the search industry, illegally pays $10 billion (around Rs 83,200 crore) a year to wireless providers like AT&T and smartphone manufacturers like Apple to be the default search engine on their products.

Google’s profits are increased because of its dominance in the competitive advertising sector.

According to Nadella, creating artificial intelligence required servers with computational power and data to train the software. He responded to servers by saying, “No problem, we are happy to put in the dollars.”

But he didn’t include Google when he said it was “problematic” if other businesses signed exclusive contracts with significant content producers.

“They say Google’s going to write this cheque and it’s exclusive and you have to match it,” he said. “When I am meeting with publishers now, they say.

Apple rejected

Furthermore, Nadella stated in court that Microsoft had attempted to have its Bing search engine become the default on Apple handsets but had been turned down.

When Microsoft was given the option to be the default search engine on PCs and mobile devices, yet a disproportionate number of people continued to use Google instead of Bing, John Schmidtlein, the chief attorney for Google, questioned Nadella on these issues.

According to Schmidtlein, Microsoft made a number of strategic mistakes that prevented Bing from gaining traction, including failing to invest in servers or developers to advance Bing and missing the mobile revolution.

Schmidtlein added that customers skipped Bing and conducted the great majority of their queries on Google as a result of Microsoft’s accomplishment in becoming the default — on some Verizon phones in 2008, BlackBerry, and Nokia in 2011, and some BlackBerry phones in 2008.

Bing is the default search engine on laptops, the majority of which run Microsoft operating systems, and Nadella recognised that its market share is under 20%.

In addition, he said, “You get up in the morning, brush your teeth, and search on Google,” alluding to the search engine’s dominance.

Query of calibre

Nadella was questioned by Judge Amit Mehta about why Apple would move to Bing given the inferior quality of the Microsoft product in the case being heard in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The query shows that the judge is interested in Google’s claim that its dominance is due to its quality rather than criminal activities.

Long after the computer behemoth had been sued for federal antitrust violations, Nadella was named CEO of Microsoft in 2014. This legal battle, which resulted in a settlement in 2001, pushed Microsoft to change some of its business practises and made room for businesses like Google.

The two developed a fierce rivalry as Google, which was formed in 1998 and is now the largest search engine in the market. Both use similar email services, search engines, and browsers, among many other things. Recent investments by Google in the Bard AI chatbot and significant investments by Microsoft in OpenAI have turned them into rivals in the field of artificial intelligence.

Jio has yet to provide information about JioSpaceFiber, including as Internet speeds and when the service would be available to subscribers in the country

The nation’s first mega fibre Internet service, JioSpaceFiber, was showcased on Friday at the 2023 India Mobile Congress with satellite technology. In order to give Internet access in places not served by standard networks, the mobile network service provider is preparing to introduce its satellite Internet services in India. JioSpaceFiber is anticipated to face competition from other service providers hoping to enter the nation’s satellite internet market, including Elon Musk’s Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and Bharti Enterprises’ OneWeb.

Jio announced that its JioSpaceFiber giga fibre Internet service, which is based on satellite technology, has already connected four rural regions in India. The regions covered by the recently installed satellite service

ONGC-Jorhat in Assam, Gir in Gujarat, Korba in Chattisgarh, and Nabrangpur in Odisha are likely for testing reasons. The company has not yet disclosed the price of its services or the schedule for when they would be available to customers in India.

As per the telecom company, Société Européenne des Satellites (SES), a satellite telecommunications network provider based in Luxembourg, will be the backbone of the JioSpaceFiber mega fibre Internet service. SES’s O3b and the upcoming O3b mPOWER satellites will be used in conjunction with the network’s medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites to deliver gigabit-level Internet connectivity.

“In India, millions of families and companies can now use broadband internet for the first time thanks to Jio. We reach out to the millions of people who are still unconnected with JioSpaceFiber,” Reliance Jio Chairman Akash Ambani stated in a prepared statement.

JioSpaceFiber will eventually compete with service providers like OneWeb (Bharti), Project Kuiper (Amazon), and Starlink (SpaceX), but the business has not said when it would launch in India. In addition to gaining new consumers to join its existing 450 million in the nation, Jio will gain from being among the first companies to offer fiber-grade Internet services to users in distant regions.