Kathy Gibson at the Ericsson Business Innovation Forum in Stockholm – Ericsson’s Media Vision 2020 is that the networked society will have been realised, with 50-billion connected devices.
Of these, 15-billion will be video-enabled, says Niklas Ronnblom, consumer trend expert: TV and media at Ericsson, which will impact the network.
Emerging markets relay on mobility, as they have limited fixed IP infrastructure and mobile has become the primary screen for users in emerging markets.
In addition, nee entrants are bringing new investment into the market,.
Meanwhile, consumer convenience is driving the market in terms of personalisation, choice and intelligent recommendation.
By 2020, one-demand and scheduled viewing will have reached a 50:50 split.
Research in 2014, representing 620-million consumers, shows that television is still the most watched medium, at home. Use of the desktop computer has decreased, while laptops have remained about the same as in 2012.
Mobile devices are seeing an increase in viewership, although this is still inside the house rather than outside.
Personalising viewing is one of the main features driving the change. Whereas the whole family had to watch the same programme before, so there are many screens that offer individual viewing.
Another trend is place-shifting, where consumers are start to access content in various times and places. The drivers for place-shifting, which 36% of respondents do, is killing time on the go, to finish already-started content, to find more time for watching and view content in the background.
Interestingly, as consumers watch more video on their mobile devices, their network of choice is WiFi. Cost is the major driver for this.
While there has been minimal change in the viewing of scheduled broadcast television, from 83% to 77%, streamed video has increased from 61% to 75%. Meanwhile, recorded broadcast television has dropped from 47% to 28% while DVD or BluRay viewing has remind steady.
A challenge for the industry is that existing restrictions on managed services impact the perceived value and trigger cord-cutting and shaving. As online services increase, 12% of respondents have reduced their paid television packages, 15% have eliminated them and only 13% have increased their paid services.
Among what users want, in order of importance, are excellent HD quality, no ads, now movies, on-demand content, sub-titles in my own language, a la carte packages, one-stop customer care, perfect live video and sound at events, extreme quality, content anywhere, one service for searching and watching.
With the current advertising model under attack, there are several ways that content providers can react. They need to ensure their ads are non-intrusive, opt-in and more relevant to the user.
There are two different universes in the media market,” Ronnblom says. “They are the pre-bundled universe, offering an all-in-one experience with little or no personalisation and with no additional access cost. In the new, atomised, universe there is full personalisation with a scattered experience and additional access costs.
“Consumers want a full atomised media experience, but they still want help aggregating it all,” he says.