Simply, the barriers to watching video simply have fallen in every way.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
5 Reasons You're Consuming More Mobile Content
Consumers are consuming more mobile content than ever before, but why? For the simplest of reasons. There's more content to watch and there's more widespread mobile broadband, and better mobile broadband. There are more smart phones and tablets to make it convenient. There are simple applications and better user interfaces, allowing users to get users to video fast.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Time Warner Cable Looks to Close an Era
Time Warner Cable apparently is looking at converting all its programing to IP, a move that would allow it to serve up video to all sorts of digital devices, eliminating the need for a set-top decoder and opening the door to either over-the-top or captive video on the existing model, but with one infrastructure supporting all forms of access.
There are all sorts of immediate, and some potential, implications. Decoders represent a huge amount of capital investment for a video provider using decoders. Eliminating the decoders would vastly reduce Time Warner Cable capex. That's the immediate benefit from an operations perspective.
From a strategic perspective, the shift to all-IP would open the possibility of over-the-top service, which in an early scenario might allow Time Warner Cable to serve up its video to current customers who also use tablets, PCs and smart phones to watch video.
In a more-disruptive scenario, Time Warner Cable could envision selling video to anybody in the United States, over the top, providing content contracts and municipal regulators allow it.
That could create quite a change in the famously collegial U.S. cable industry, where cable operators simply do not compete with each other.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Search Results Follow Market Share Rules
Many years ago, I learned that there are fairly reliable relationships between market share and profitability. Basically, the rule is that the number-one provider in any market has twice the market share of provider number two, which in turn has twice the share of provider number three. It's a remarkably useful rule of thumb.
If the number one result has 34 percent share, the rule would predict the second result to be 17 percent, which is precisely what Chitika found. The rule also would suggest result three would have 8.5 percent share. In the Chitika data, the third search result has 11 percent share. The fourth result has eight percent share, as the rule suggests would be the pattern.
A new examination by Chitika, looking at the value of Google search results, ranked by share, is remarkably consistent with those rules of thumb about market share.
As it turns out, the number-one search result tends to get double the traffic of the number-two result. The Chitika data also shows that search result three has 11.4 percent share, while the number-four result has eight percent share. That's pretty close to what the rule of thumb would suggest.
In search results, as in other markets, share makes a huge difference. The other thing you might recognize is a standard Pareto distribution, sometimes known as a "long tail" or 80/20 rule.
Rules of thumb can be excellent guides to strategy, if a company really wants to lead a market. It's also nice to know that at least some things one learns in school turn out to be correct in real life.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Google Announces Video Chat for Android 2.3 Devices
Google is launching an update to Android Gingerbread, version 2.3.4, enabling video chat using GTalk on Android smart phones. This is the same functionality offered as part of Honeycomb, version 3.0, and allows any Android phone with the proper version of Gingerbread to conduct a video chat with anyone using a compatible (Honeycomb) Android tablet, their smartphone, or GTalk on their desktop.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
RIM: Weaker Guidance, Near Term
Research In Motion has updated its financial guidance and said it expects to sell fewer BlackBerry smartphones than it previously estimated. "RIM now expects fully diluted earnings per share for Q1 to be in the range of $1.30-$1.37, lower than the range of $1.47-$1.55 previously forecasted by RIM on March 24, 2011," RIM said.
"This shortfall is primarily due to shipment volumes of BlackBerry smartphones that are now expected to be at the lower end of the range of 13.5-14.5 million forecasted in March and a shift in the expected mix of devices shipped towards handsets with lower average selling prices," RIM noted.
RIM still expects “strong revenue growth” in the third and fourth quarter thanks to the introduction of new BlackBerry smartphones. The near-term shipments aren't really the issue.
RIM still expects “strong revenue growth” in the third and fourth quarter thanks to the introduction of new BlackBerry smartphones. The near-term shipments aren't really the issue.
The problem is that with Apple and Android leading the smart phone market, plus the expected revitalization of Microsoft, given its alliance with Nokia, there is precious little room left in the smart phone market for player number four, whomever that might be. Unless you conclude that Microsoft, which now will count Nokia as part of its ecosystem, falls further, RIM is the provider likely to be bumped down into the fourth spot.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Mobile Content Ecosystem to Shift?
Mobile operators in emerging markets need to make urgent adjustments to content strategies if they are to adapt to rapid shifts in the market, according to Ovum analysts.
While mobile service providers currently are the dominant force in the emerging markets mobile content space, this is set to change due to strong competition from new platforms such as application stores.
“Unless telcos make rapid changes to their strategy and execution, their dominance is set to be challenged,' says Angel Dobardziev, Ovum analyst.
Some might argue that no matter what telcos do, that will happen anyway, given that the leading application stores are operated by device manufacturers such as Apple, independent providers such as GetJar or operating system providers such as Google.
“We have found that once a consumer has bought a data access plan, they begin to move away from telco services,' says Dobardziev. 'This will ultimately reduce the role of mobile operators to little more than providers of bandwidth.”
Some might argue that Dobardziev already has answered the original question.
While mobile service providers currently are the dominant force in the emerging markets mobile content space, this is set to change due to strong competition from new platforms such as application stores.
“Unless telcos make rapid changes to their strategy and execution, their dominance is set to be challenged,' says Angel Dobardziev, Ovum analyst.
Some might argue that no matter what telcos do, that will happen anyway, given that the leading application stores are operated by device manufacturers such as Apple, independent providers such as GetJar or operating system providers such as Google.
“We have found that once a consumer has bought a data access plan, they begin to move away from telco services,' says Dobardziev. 'This will ultimately reduce the role of mobile operators to little more than providers of bandwidth.”
Some might argue that Dobardziev already has answered the original question.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Dilbert Isn't Fiction; Neither is This
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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