Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Telcos and Cable are Not "Platforms"

The fight over the TV is really a fight over the next massive consumer platform that is coming up for grabs. Of platforms there are few: Google owns search, Amazon owns digital retail, Facebook owns social, and Apple owns consumer devices. Microsoft owns, well, nothing at the moment, despite its handsome revenue stream from Windows and Office, argues James McQuivey of Forrester Research.

But Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is already the most-watched net-connected TV device in the United States and soon, the world. With more than 70 million consoles in households worldwide, as many as half of them connected to the Internet, depending on the country, Microsoft can rapidly drive new video services into tens of millions of households, McQuivey argues.

Significantly missing from those lists of platforms are cable or telco access service providers. At least for the moment, telcos and cable operators are not "platforms."

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