March 27, 2008 – THE handheld IFE bottle has been well and truly shaken over the last few weeks and the stories are frothing forth as the suppliers position themselves in the media eye ahead of next week’s Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg.

e.Digital has announced a new customer while old sparring partner digEcor has named a list of carriers as users of its second-generation digEplayer XT. London-based Mezzo is setting up an operations centre in New Zealand, and the industry rumour machine suggests that Panasonic may be winning some and losing others.  

San Diego-based e.Digital says its eVU device and associated services have been selected by French carrier Corsairfly. A member of the TUI Group, the Paris-headquartered airline flies two Airbus A330-200s and six 747-400s, the latter in high-density 587-seat configuration, to 30 destinations, including the French West Indies, Reunion Island, Mauritius, Madagascar, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Israel.

Though e.Digital, in common with most of its competitors, gives no numbers for the quantity of eVUs to be acquired by Corsairfly, it now has an unquestionably healthy customer base. As well as Corsairfly, e.Digital deals in its own right with Air France, Alitalia, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines and Italian leisure carrier Neos Air. It also supplies the hardware for Mezzo’s turnkey IFE service, which has been adopted by British corporate and VIP charter operator Titan Airways, TUI Group charter carriers Arkefly of the Netherlands, Jetairfly (Belgium) and Thomsonfly (UK), British low-cost carriers Flyglobespan and Jet2.com, charter operator XL Airways and transatlantic premium-only specialist Silverjet.

e.Digital has long been at intellectual-property loggerheads with Utah-based digEcor, which is now seeing its long-standing market leadership challenged by IMS of California (Inflight Online, March 25). Last year the company suffered the disappointment of seeing a high-profile customer, transatlantic premium-only carrier MAXjet, defaulting on its bills before finally going bust. But now digEcor is bouncing back, listing Garuda Indonesia, French premium-only operator L’Avion and Vision Airlines of the USA among the takers for its second-generation digEplayer XT, and alerting the market to new product announcements at Aircraft Interiors.  

Earlier this month president Brad Heckel alluded to “new, less expensive product choices with some of the longest battery lives on the market.” The reference to battery life suggests that whatever digEcor has in the works is more likely to be an out-and-out handheld device rather than the oft-delayed semi-embedded digEsystem. The company has also announced a “nothing down” financing scheme for potential customers, and has declared that this year will see it transformed into a full-service IFE provider.