ABI Research says that today's portable digital audio and video players needs to become truly portable, in the way that old portable cassette and CD players were -- Vamsi Sistla, director of residential entertainment research said, "Today's so-called portables are still tied by an umbilical cord to the computer and a wired broadband connection. The industry should address these shortcomings." Today the signs are that the industry agreed, and true portability is beginning to arrive. Analyst Joseph Yau, who has just updated their 2004 study, reports that Wi-Fi networking capabilities are starting to appear in portable audio players. "Although such models are still few in number, they will become a flood in 2006," he says. Thomson is even introducing a product line that will interface the player directly with a home hi-fi system, without the need for an intermediary PC and broadband connection. On the video side, EchoStar has just invested $10 million in player vendor Archos, which is said to be introducing a specially-tailored media player that will load movies directly from EchoStar's DISH Network feeds.
The global streaming industry has spent the better part of a decade chasing subscriber counts as the primary metric of success. That era is now formally over. New market data from Omdia confirms that the industry has crossed a decisive threshold; one that shifts the competitive playing field from growth-at-all-costs to monetization discipline. For senior executives navigating media, advertising, and technology strategy, the implications extend well beyond entertainment. A Historic Revenue Crossover Online video revenue increased 13.5 percent to $176 billion in 2025, while pay-TV revenue declined 4 percent to $170 billion; marking the first time in the industry's history that streaming has surpassed legacy pay-TV in revenue terms. This is not a rounding error or a statistical artifact; it represents the culmination of more than a decade of structural disruption to the traditional broadcast and cable TV model. Global subscriptions to online video services reached 2.24 billion by the ...