Telecoms and Entertainment Developments Set to Transform the Landscape

Convergence - that buzzword still bouncing around the halls of media and telecoms companies - is truly emerging from abstract jargon to reality, says independent market analyst Datamonitor. In a new report just published, Datamonitor says consumers are adopting technologies and services that blur the boundaries between entertainment and communication. These developments says Datamonitor, affect both players within the market and those supporting it.

Datamonitor stresses that the ultimately, the driving force for the adoption of technologies in the media and broadcasting sector is notably determined by the level of consumer demand and acceptance of new services and not by how good the media technology looks.

Chris Khouri, Datamonitor's associate analyst for media and broadcasting and author of the report says "Just because a media technology looks good does not mean that it will be successful. The driving force for the adoption of technologies in the media and broadcasting sector is notably determined by the level of consumer demand and acceptance of new services. Consumers will only use new technologies if they see value or are positively affected in some way by a service - whether that service is mobile broadcast TV, IPTV, social networking or online advertising. Organizations involved in the telecommunications, media and entertainment space need to address this issue and not simply endorse new services simply due to the attractiveness of the technology."

Mobile Broadcast TV: successful new channel or next expensive flop?

The worlds of public service broadcasting (PSB) and mobile telecommunications are becoming increasingly intertwined. Mobile broadcast television has been gaining increasing traction across the globe since 2005 with trials and services launched around the world. The Asia-Pacific region truly pioneered mobile broadcast TV with Korea and Japan illustrating strong success with the service. The region is further set to experience high growth as China and other nations boost their mobile broadcast television offerings.

Consumers are currently able to - and more willing to - access a variety of video content on their mobile phones, including downloads to flash memory, 3G streaming and mobile digital broadcast TV. The complexity of the mobile TV landscape, however, is intensifying and this creates serious barriers for its widespread adoption.

Competing formats for mobile broadcast such as DVB-H, MediaFlo, ISDB-T, S-DMB/T-DMB all juggle for dominance in different regions, each backed by different hardware manufacturers, technology suppliers, content providers and mobile telecommunication operators. The landscape is set to further complicate over the coming year as China pushes its own standard - China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) - based on homegrown intellectual property.

Spectrum allocation is yet another issue that hinders the mass adoption of the mobile TV. Datamonitor considers broadcast to mobile to be an extremely lucrative opportunity for both content providers as well as mobile telecommunications operators, only if significant barriers to entry can be overcome.

Digital television in Western Europe and North America grows as the landscape further complicates

Consumers are able to view digital television via a multitude of formats with both Europe and the US illustrating strong consumer adoption until the end of the decade. Satellite, cable, digital terrestrial television (DTT) and IPTV all offer distinct features with regards to interactivity and additional services.

Khouri continues "The landscape is becoming more complicated as both IPTV operators and traditional broadcasters are under pressure from Internet based competition through video streaming services such as YouTube and DailyMotion. The increasing promotion of white label service providers for streaming video platforms - such as vMix and VideoEgg - will further pose both a threat and opportunity for traditional digital television providers. Datamonitor considers white label video streaming services to be an attractive opportunity for traditional non-broadcast media, thus blurring the definitions of media services and establishing non-traditional competitors in the digital television market."

Posted to the site on 22nd March 2007