Here is a nice set of predictions for the future of TV, giving a view on how in the next decade video will become more personal and democratic as new networks continue to break the traditional broadcast model.
I was asked to play the role of futurologist for a CVL newsletter this month, so I reached for inspiration on style of predictions; I went straight to the wise words of my favourite author on the subject, Scott Adams. He writes in the The Dilbert Future!, “There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as ‘nutty methods’. Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as ‘a complete waste of time’.”
So with all that said here is what I think will happen in the next ten years?
Bill’s Prediction No.1 – we’ll be hiding from the data deluge
We’ve been riding the broadband wave for at least 6 years and will continue to do so for several years in our pursuit of ‘always on’ high speed access. The telecoms world has been obsessed with how many households and users have broadband access and how fast that access is, but we will get bored of these figures when we have something else more interesting to talk about.
Fixed line access speeds will improve and the emerging mobile broadband technologies mean we will have enough bandwidth for all our needs wherever we are – but with all this fast access at our fingertips in 10 years what we will really want is to be ‘sometimes off’.
Broadband speeds of 10Mb will be the norm even on the move, but more of us will be seeking out blind spots to hide from the constant deluge of data.
Bill’s Prediction No.2 – where did I put my invisible communication device?
Currently, fashionable trends seem to take about twenty to thirty years before they appear again – just look at how many kids today are wearing skinny jeans, going to open air rock concerts and think that Paul Weller, Chopper bicycles and Blake’s 7 are cool. We could see 1998 technology becoming fashionable again in 2018. What does that mean? It means you and I will be using the latest micro-sized devices and the kids of the day will be showing off their brick-sized mobile phones.
Everyone will have mobile phones and most of us will have a selection to choose from, depending on our mood and what we are doing that day. There’ll even be options to build your phone into your clothes, and some early adopters will be integrating their communications devices into their own bodies to create a cyborg solution.
Bill’s Prediction No.3 – the telly will always be on
Our pattern of TV viewing is on the verge of a major shift – and shift is the key word here – from the ‘sit back and receive’ style we grew up with to a mode in which we enjoy more control over what we watch and when we watch it. As the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) becomes more commonplace in our living rooms more of us are watching ‘timeshift TV’, i.e. watching our favourite programmes when it suits us rather than as scheduled. Within 10 years we will benefit from the ability to enjoy ‘placeshift TV’, i.e. take our TV schedule with us when we travel so those favourite programmes are available on a TV, PC or mobile device wherever we are.
Bill’s Prediction No.4 – shopping only for experiences
As the technology improves, and as we get more and more comfortable with the security and reliability of the ordering and delivery processes, we will do all our ordering online. The actual shopping experience will be much more interesting as stores become showrooms and more retailers focus on creating ‘experience stores’ like this extreme sports store in Florida.
Bill’s Prediction No.5 – these, and all other predictions, will turn out to be entirely untrue
The one thing that is certain with predictions is that they will not be right. History is littered with awsome predictive errors including some made by the most prestigious of scientists Try this for British technological foresight at its finest:
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”
- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.
There’s been a long trail of activity in Mobile Banking & Payments over recent years and some banks would seem to be on the 2nd launch of mobile banking now – there is an upswell of focus on the mobile phone as a serious tool for payments and banking, with SMS and NFC featuring as the popular technologies.
That’s not so surprising when you remember 1) Mobile phones are poised to become the world’s first ubiquitous technology and 2) The cost to acquire customers means banks* are searching for the edge over the competition. But knowing there’s an opportunity and exploiting that opportunity successfully are two different things altogether.
In this wave of Mobile Banking initiatives I’m intrigued to see how the strategies of Banks, Mobile Operators and Retailers will unfold. I’m sure we will see more announcements like this one in the year ahead – I look forward to the fun of the game – who will be the key players and what tactics will they use to get ahead?
But I will close with two little warnings a)don’t lose sight of the fact that the internet is going mobile and so all your online investment can and should be leveraged not ignored when you get seduced by new technology standards for mobiles; b)mobile is one channel and in the customer’s mind it matters how you link that with your other channels so think that through before you get carried away in any one channel.
*Note: Not just banks, all consumer businesses are looking for an edge & many are competing with banks for the consumer relationship (by which they mean money)
In 2007 there has been a dramatic increase in usage of internet for television, at the same time viewing has declined for the terrestrial TV channels - figures from Nielsen Online suggest that almost 21 million people in Britain visited a television, video or movie-related web site in September 2007, a 28% increase on the previous year.
In the UK the TV broadcasters have seen their share of television viewing slide – Channel 4 has seen its share of viewing fall by almost 12% over the year, while Five has fallen by nearly 10%, BBC One and Two are also down by 3%, while ITV dropped nearly 2%. This is no more than a percentage point in the share of each channel, but collectively the trend is clear. Viewing of other channels has increased correspondingly by nearly 9%, partly as result of more people having access to multichannel digital television.
John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, speaking at their global forum in San Jose, suggested that by 2011, between 15 to 20% of internet traffic will be video delivered to the television. He dismissed plans by broadcasters to offer their programmes online, saying he could record any show he wants and watch it on his personal vide recorder.
Valerio Zingarelli, the recently appointed CEO of new entrant, Babelgum says, “the intense competition can only lead to greater innovation and a substantial increase in service quality for viewers, and we’re certainly expecting more new entrants to arrive in 2008. Whilst traditional television platforms such as cable and broadcast TV still serve a large audience, those viewers unwilling to wear the straight-jacket linear TV offerings put them in are seeking new ways of accessing content tailored to their specific taste, whether it be sport, news or entertainment. Broadcasters worried about web television should realise internet TV is not trying to replace traditional TV, but is merely giving increasingly savvy viewers greater control and choice. It is this greater control, and choice, which will see internet TV take its place as a conventional platform alongside broadcast TV in 2008 and beyond.”
Meanwhile research from Nokia predicts that in five years up to a quarter of the entertainment enjoyed by people will have been created, edited and shared within their social circle rather than being produced by traditional media companies. Their study, entitled A Glimpse of the Next Episode, carried out by The Future Laboratory, surveyed over 9,000 consumers aged between 16-35.
Mark Selby, vice president of multimedia at Nokia said, “from our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call ‘Circular’. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups — a form of collaborative social media.”
All these indicators point to a continued shift away from TV, and this could be accelerated by another trend – place shifting is remotely accessing personal media from another location over the internet, and is destined to become a standard feature of personal computers and set-top boxes.
A new report on this emerging market is called – Bending the rules of time and space: Trends and analysis for place shifted media, and will be published by The Diffusion Group in the first week of 2008 to coincide with the CES in Las Vegas.
Colin Dixon, senior consultant at The Diffusion Group, suggests that even if place shifting proves to be a compelling application, it will not be capable of acting as a stand-alone revenue driver or support an independent hardware platform, but with place shifting embedded in devices from set-top boxes to digital media adaptors and games consoles, it will have a significant impact on how people interact with digital media.
So all in all it seems like 2008 will be a big year for TV via the internet – but one thing hasn’t changed – we are still at the mercy of our internet connection and the bandwidth available incoming to our PC. We all know what an awful viewing experience that can create, so for me in the foreseeable future it will be downloads only! Whilst downloading video content requires a little planning ahead, at least it ensures better viewing quality than streaming.
I just realised I’ve been pushing similar views about digital entertainment for about 4 years now, here is an interview from 2005 when I was working with BT on a proposition for movie downloads to exploit the emergence of broadband access as a mass market – that work was later subsumed into BT Vision led by Dan Marks.
The UK IPTV customer numbers just don’t add up at the moment, but everyone is being very optimistic for the UK, European and Global take-up. Loads of people have jumped on the BT-bashing bandwagon to say that they are behind target with numbers of customers recruited onto their broadband TV service BT Vision. BT is claiming it is ahead of schedule in acquisitions, many observers are keen to interpret the numbers differently. Nonetheless some ambitious forecasts are being touted by BT and others for the next three to five years.
BT Vision says that its public target is still 100,000 customers by the end of 2007 and it is actually ahead of schedule. In fact they say they have already signed up 100,000 customers, although according to the most recent figures it has only 70,000 installations. So it would seem there is quite a lag between signing them up and setting up the service for them. they also say they are adding over 5,000 customers a week, so 100,000 by the end of the year looks possible. In previous statements BT said it would have be “initially connecting thousands of customers then hundreds of thousands by the end of 2007″.
Despite all this confusion BT Vision has re-iterated its target of 2-3 million customers in the medium term, which it defines as “3-5 years from December 2006″. So that is at least 2 million customers by the end of 2011, a big challenge at over nine thousand net new customers a week for four years. To achieve three million customers in the next two years would require over 27,000 new customers a week. That does not take into account customer churn, which is likely to see at least 10% of these customers leaving every year.
Meanwhile, Tiscali TV who acquired the Video Networks Homechoice service in August 2006 for £100 million reported having only 36,000 customers at the end of October 2007, despite extending its network to be able to reach over five million homes in the UK. Tiscali has been migrating customers onto its own local loop unbundled network. The company says it is registering 250 new activations per day. The number of television customers still remains a small fraction of its broadband customer base, which now stands at over two million. The baffling thing is that Homechoice reported 45,000 customers before the change of ownership.
But to keep the theme of optimism, research company MRG has substantially uplifted their global forecast of IPTV subscribers, up from 63.6 million to 72.6 million in 2011. Apparently, this reflects their view of big opportunities for America, China, India and Korea to catch up with Europe. Len Feldman, director of IPTV analysis at MRG says “Europe will remain the number one IPTV market in terms of subscriber count through 2011, but Asia is catching up quickly and will most likely surpass Europe in 2012-2013,” he added. “In North America, Verizon and AT&T are growing considerably faster than we previously forecasted, and we expect Verizon to be the world’s largest IPTV service provider in 2011.”
The latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index says that online sales in the UK have grown by another 38% in the first half of the year and now account for 17 pence in every pound spent. The report says this figure could rise to as high as 50% in five years, but I’m wondering if it could it be 100% in ten years?
Sounds impossible doesn’t it! But, perhaps all our ordering will be online if stores become showrooms. There are currently very few examples of great “experience stores” but one of my favourites is this extreme sports store in Florida. I’m still looking for a whole new wave (pardon the pun if you’ve checked out the store) of experience stores in the UK.
Please let me know when you find more examples.
