Digital Lifescapes

Communication Technology reports that addressable advertising is all about getting the right message to the right viewer at the right time. On that note, CableLabs hosted an event that focused on DPI certification and ad splicing within the addressable advertising arena, as well as enhanced TV. BigBand Networks, OpenTV and Invidi were among the vendors who took part in a live addressable advertising demonstration at CableLabs. The demo used BigBand's Broadband Multimedia-Service Router (BMR), along with OpenTV's SpotOn and Invidi's Advatar solutions in the set-top boxes. SpotOn and Advatar monitor viewership history and can collect third-party data such as zip codes, demographics or income data from third party companies. With narrowcast addressable advertising, an ad decision manager system will be able to tell cable operators and advertisers what ads were sent and how many times. BigBand's Paul Delzio said that a deployed BMR needs a software upgrade and a new card, f...

Conventional wireless industry marketing wisdom is that consumers seek a 'single wireless device' with multiple capabilities built into the handset, however, studies show that most users willingly carry redundant hand-held devices, reports In-Stat. For instance, more than 15 percent of people carry two wireless mobile phones, the high-tech market research firm says. The myth of the converged mobile device appears to be perpetuated by technology-centric vendors who have little awareness -- or real interest -- in the discovery of substantive need and associated market demand. "Eighty percent of the people that have a camera phone say they regularly carry their digital camera, 75 percent of SmartPhone users also carry a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and more than 50 percent of users of multimedia phones also carry their MP3 player," says Bill Hughes, In-Stat analyst. "It is important to understand this customer behavior if the wireless industry is to offer comme...

A new Strategy Analytics study of the habits of 5,000 U.S. and European technology consumers, "Applied Consumer Analytics," highlights the impact of digital lifestyle factors on determining actionable market segments. One growing segment identified in the study is the 'Challenged Consumers' category, whose digital appetites drive a higher level of spending than their incomes might suggest. Their demographics alone might cause this group to be overlooked, but closer inspection shows them to be in the middle of a 'great divide' between traditional consumer technology product use and an emerging 'Web-lifestyle,' characterized by a high degree of interactivity. These consumers are spending more than average on ringtones, games and other online activities -- which suggests a potential opportunity for carefully targeted interactive services. This should serve as a wake-up call to vendors of games, online media, cellphones and even automotive electronics -- a...

According to Reuters, Comcast Corp. began testing a Web site for users to post their own videos, and will select the best clips to be aired on the cable operator's video-on-demand television service. With the Ziddio.com contest site, the U.S. number one cable operator enters a market made popular by YouTube.com, the video-sharing site bought by Web search giant Google Inc. that boasts 100 million viewings a day. Comcast, which will fully launch Ziddio later this year, aims to differentiate it from dozens of video sites by offering amateur videomakers the chance to win contests and air their clips on its on-demand channel, said a source at Comcast. Like most cable and satellite TV providers, Comcast has seen younger viewers spend more time online, on sites such as YouTube and Revver.com, watching homemade videos. Eighteen months ago, Comcast launched a Dating On Demand service, which allows users to submit video clips of themselves for playback on-demand. Comcast is aiming for Ziddi...

The Olswang Convergence Consumer Survey 2006 has revealed that rights holders and service providers are facing new challenges in the battle for consumer attention and control of the living room. In the digital age, consumers want choice and control but for providers, the biggest hurdle is to overcome consumers' unwillingness to pay for content. Consumers are now demonstrating a clear preference for full-length feature films and TV programs over shorter clips and trailers as their content of choice for the PC. Nearly 40 percent of UK consumers are already streaming or downloading audio-visual content onto computers at home and nearly half of these are doing so in the living room. While this may suggest a potentially lucrative new market for rights holders and service providers, the downside is that UK consumers appear unwilling to pay to receive content on their home PC, with 1 in 2 not prepared to pay 'anything extra' for streamed/downloaded content and a further 40 percent...

The market for mobile TV and video is growing rapidly, but content providers are finding it difficult to finance new projects, according to a new report published by Informa Telecoms and Media in partnership with Peacefulfish. Informa forecasts worldwide revenues from mobile TV and video services will rise from $2.46 billion in 2006 to $8.35 billion in 2011, but content providers vying for a share of this market face challenges. "While mobile TV and video content is less expensive to produce than film or broadcast TV content, it still requires upfront production costs that typically run several thousand dollars per minute," says Chris Coffman, senior research analyst at Informa and author of the report. "Revenue shares don't fund the initial creation of content. The mobile TV and video sector would benefit from distributors, such as broadcasters, mobile operators and content aggregators, sharing in more of the risk." One strategy distributors can adopt is to use...

Informitv reports that Lord Currie, the chairman of Ofcom, has predicted that internet delivered content will soon overtake broadcast television. He said that a new approach to regulation will be required and that this will be crucial to the future economic success of the communications industry. The prediction from the chairman of the communications regulator in the United Kingdom came in the annual Ofcom lecture hosted by the Westminster Media Forum. Lord Currie said that 16-24 year olds are now watching 7 hours less television a week than the average, viewing less public service broadcasting than ever and spending more time online. He said the 'on-demand' delivery of services is becoming a reality for younger consumers. He predicted that by 2012, following digital switchover, when the London Olympics is being held, this generation will be parents with young children "for whom broadcast television will have ceased to be the lead medium." "As broadcast televisio...

According to Reuters, Wal-Mart's British supermarket chain 'Asda' is boosting online operations to rival those of Tesco and J. Sainsbury, with nearly 80 percent national coverage by October 2007. A spokeswoman said on Sunday that by next October Asda hoped to have the service in 157 stores out of its total of 310, giving online access to 100 percent of the group's customers and 75 to 80 percent of British shoppers. "That's in line with Tesco and Sainsbury," she added. About only half of Asda's customers currently have access to online shopping, via 91 stores. The move will create about 1,800 jobs for drivers, back office staff and "pickers" who collect the produce from shelves. The home shopping service will offer all Asda merchandise except for DVDs, CDs and computer games, which are currently delivered by the postal service. As previously reported, Tesco has plans to bring its innovative multichannel retail sales model to the U.S. market, a...

USA Today reports on the findings from a new survey of 2,551 Americans, released by Harris Interactive and software firm RightNow Technologies. About 85 percent of those polled said they've become so flustered, they've ended up swearing, shouting, experiencing chest pains, crying or smashing things. Slightly more than half said not being able to get a live person on the phone was their greatest frustration, according to the survey. Seven out of 10 people polled said representatives weren't trained adequately. The findings illustrate the growing anxiety of U.S. consumers as they buy more gadgets for home use and expect them to work out of the box. And they reflect the challenges vendors will face during the holiday shopping season, when they are typically deluged with customer-support phone calls. The potential financial consequences for the multibillion-dollar home-PC and consumer-electronics industries are huge, say tech analysts. The difference between companies boasting ...

A new ABI Research forecast finds that in 2006 the number of commercial Wi-Fi hotspots will grow by 47 percent worldwide to 143,700. While almost three-quarters of these sites (74 percent) are still found in North America and Europe, the Asia Pacific region is growing very rapidly. "By 2011 the Asia Pacific region will surpass both Europe and North America in the number of Wi-Fi hotspots," says vice president and research director Stan Schatt. But for the moment, Europe is still the market leader with over 57 thousand hotspots. One major driver of Wi-Fi hotspots is retail establishments. A prominent example is McDonalds, which has moved to add hotspots to 17 percent of its 4,000 locations. The growing Wi-Fi hotspot market is fueling a demand for Wi-Fi access points. More than 675,000 access points will be shipped this year specifically for use in hotspots. Not only are hotspot deployments and their subscriber numbers growing, but ABI Research notes that there also has been a ...

Instant messaging (IM) has topped e-mail as the primary means of communication among U.S. teenagers with online access, according to "Digital Media Habits," a recent online survey from Parks Associates. Less than one-fifth of people aged 13-17 use e-mail as their primary communication method with friends, compared with nearly 40 percent of adults aged 25-54. At the same time, more than one-third of online teens rely primarily on instant messaging to communicate with friends while just 11 percent of adults aged 25-34 favor this method. "Digital Media Habits" finds this shift in communication habits is occurring against the backdrop of other changes on the Internet. For example, roughly one-third of all online teens use social networking sites like MySpace daily. "We are seeing a generational shift in communication patterns, and e-mail is now old-fashioned," said John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates. "Teens and young adults are increas...

A new trial in Dallas, Texas, bringing together MasterCard, Nokia and retail convenience store 7-Eleven, will see Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile phones equipped with MasterCard "PayPass" contactless payment capability. Up to 500 participants will take part in the six month trial. A key aspect of the trial is over-the-air NFC payment provisioning using Giesecke & Devrient's (G&D) new chip management offering. Previous trials have relied on card issuers managing the provision of each handset before handing them over to each trial participant -- a method that would be a barrier to the wide scale adoption of NFC payments. Alongside provisioning issues, established operators have also struggled with two key issues around NFC-enabled payments -- finding the new revenue streams to cover the cost of including the technology in their handsets and, fundamentally, the reduced control that NFC payments bring into their wireless service infrastructure. NFC payme...

Unless market conditions change drastically, 'moblogging' -- the practice of posting multimedia content, usually photos, from mobile camera phones directly to blog websites -- will remain a minority recreation for the foreseeable future, according to ABI Research. According to senior analyst Ken Hyers, "At the end of 2006 there will be about 655,000 active mobloggers worldwide. The word 'active' is important, because many people start moblogs, but nearly as many abandon them within weeks. And even by 2011, when there will be some 3 billion mobile subscribers, we expect a mere 2.7 million to be moblogging." Given the popularity of social networking websites such as MySpace and YouTube, what is holding moblogging back? The generally poor quality of the pictures made by most camera phones is one factor, as well as the sometimes clumsy upload processes. "And," says Hyers, "for most people there's simply not enough going on in their lives that t...

For today's American teen, friendships are developed in areas beyond the school walls or their neighborhoods. Alloy Media + Marketing and Harris Interactive findings from a collaborative study offer an emerging picture of what friendship means to today's youth. New technologies shift means of communication across this 'digital generation,' as teens come to define their closest circles by those they are connected with both online and offline. The study depicts a generation more at ease through virtual communication, with many reporting they are more likely to reveal their true selves and to share more personal information with friends online than face-to-face. Youth connect with each other in a variety of ways and favor certain means of connecting over others. Both tweens and teens are most likely to spend time with their friends in school and outside of school, by getting together with friends in person and speaking to them on the telephone. Teens are much greater users...

Informitv reports that an industry group is seeking to address 'perceived concerns' over channel changing delays associated with emerging internet protocol television (IPTV) services. It comes in response to Microsoft promoting fast channel changing as a key benefit of its IPTV software platform, but it remains unclear to what extent this is a real issue. Apparently, it's yet another case of a technology solution in search of a meaningful problem. The Internet Streaming Media Alliance, which promotes standards-based systems, has identified fast channel change as "a vital quality of experience issue potentially affecting consumer adoption of IPTV." However, the need is perhaps subjective. Whether or not this is a real issue, there is no doubt that Microsoft, which has a proprietary 'patent pending' approach to achieving fast channel changing, has consistently identified this as a key feature of its IPTV platform. In usability testing, Microsoft has found th...

Independent film distributors usually enjoy good times when new distribution avenues first emerge, because they aggressively license their films while the more cautious major studios hang back. So why haven't Indies cashed in on the digital boom with downloads from websites and services like iTunes -- to the extent they did in the early days of the videocassette takeoff two decades ago? "In a world where every film ever made is available anytime, consumers will need guidance," says John Sloss, co-founder of Cinetic Media, a leading consultant to the film industry. "The full infrastructure and navigation are not quite there yet." Sloss believes that buys of digital movie downloads will gravitate to web services that market films based on consumers' expressed interests, past buying patterns, and behavior -- as Amazon already does with books by sending targeted recommendation emails to consumers saying "based on books you bought, you might like this too......

Next-generation, richly featured mobile phone handsets capable of both voice and high-speed data are still at the early stage of adoption, but are starting to win mind-share and regular use among highly-mobile U.S. business travelers, reports In-Stat. According to a recent In-Stat survey, business travelers spending $300 per month or more on wireless services, and business travelers on the road 30 percent of the time, are beginning to take to the new handsets. "For instance, they carry second handheld mobile devices more often and use their advanced features more extensively than do business travelers in general," says Allyn Hall, In-Stat analyst. "And their use of SmartPhones as the primary device of the two they carry is already starting to rival the BlackBerry." In-Stat's study found the following: - Heavy business mobile users are consuming about a third of their total airtime via their secondary handsets. - Challenges for next-generation mobile phone suppli...

There are many challenges to overcome before IPTV goes mainstream, says a new report from Infonetics Research. Many of those obstacles are expected to be overcome for the worldwide IPTV subscriber base to more than double every year from 2005 to 2009, to reach the forecast of 68.9 million total subscribers. However, even if the subscriber growth estimates are proven unreachable, equipment vendors will still benefit from a windfall. Infonetics' report forecasts IPTV service provider capex to increase dramatically, with sales of IPTV equipment to skyrocket -- from $371 million to $6.8 billion -- between 2005 and 2009. The evolving IPTV business case scenario is beginning to follow the 3G wireless network build-out model -- where a typical service provider's huge infrastructure investment has preceded a coherent and plausible market development plan. Report highlights include: - Service providers are expected to generate significant IPTV service revenue between 2005 and 2009, with...

AP reports that the world's leading consumer electronics makers have teamed up to develop a wireless technology to carry high-definition video and eliminate the cables that links televisions with set-top boxes and other equipment. Seven companies announced that they formed the WirelessHD Consortium to free high-definition TVs from the tangle of cables connected to cable or satellite boxes, gaming consoles, DVD players, or even camcorders and other portable multimedia gadgets. The companies are LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, known for its Panasonic brand, NEC, Samsung Electronics, Sony, and Toshiba, as well as SiBEAM Inc. a wireless technology start-up. Industry analysts predicted the first products to carry the WirelessHD technology won't hit the market until at least 2008. The format is designed to work within ranges of up to 32 feet -- and within the same room -- using the 60-gigahertz radio frequency band, said John Marshall, chairman of WirelessHD. This sta...

According to IDC, IPTV mania is sweeping Western Europe, which is now home to more than 30 IPTV providers, and by the end of 2006 IPTV will be available in nearly every country in the region. IDC estimates that the IPTV market in Europe is currently worth around $500 million, and will grow at a CAGR of 71 percent to reach $4.3 billion by 2010. In the next five years, household penetration of IPTV services will increase from 1 percent in 2006 to 11 percent by 2010. The countries that will make up a large portion of this growth are France, Italy, and Spain, where the pay-TV markets are less developed than elsewhere in Europe, where the first large IPTV services were launched, and where some of the more innovative providers are based. However, IDC points out that while IPTV offers a major new revenue source for service providers, it also requires massive network investment and the ability to navigate the complex world of content. This means that in addition to their existing competitors i...