Some of the major announcements coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this week revolve around content, with Ericsson focusing on the personalization of entertainment, Dish announcing its Sling TV over-the-top streaming service and Samsung extending its Milk music and video content from handsets to TVs and its virtual reality headset.
With content access proliferating across platforms – many of them including content delivery to mobile devices – here are some of the top trends in the content ecosystem.
• Streaming on-demand video instead of linear content. According to the most recent report from Ericsson’s Consumer Lab, the company expects that most people will be watching more streaming video than traditional TV by 2015 – this year.
“We foresee it will be a turning point in the market,” said Claes Cegrell, head of portfolio for OSS and service enablement at Ericsson, in a recent interview.
This trend is reflected in telecom in the recent introduction of new streaming services, even by telecom operators themselves. In Canada, for instance, Bell Canada launched its CraveTV streaming offering, while Rogers and Shaw partnered to debut their Shomi streaming service.
• Shifting viewing of online video to mobile devices. BI Intelligence reported that online and mobile media consumption has already surpassed traditional TV consumption, with about 37% of media consumption happening via TV in 2014, compared to mobile at 23% and online at 18%.
According to Adobe’s latest Video Benchmarking Report for online video/TV Everywhere, Android apps have now surpassed desktop browsers as access points for watching TV online, at 20% compared to 19% for browsers. iOS continues to lead in market share, accounting for 51% of the access points for watching TV online. Adobe also found that smartphone viewing of online videos surpassed tablet viewing for the first time, climbing to 14% via smartphone compared to 13% on tablets.
Charles Cheevers, CTO of Arris Group, said there is a growing recognition in the cable and telecom industry that the consumer wants the ability to access content anywhere, anytime, from any device, “and if you don’t have it, you’re going to die as a (multichannel video delivery) provider.”
Cisco has reported that for IP traffic in general, the amount from cellular and Wi-Fi devices will exceed that of wired devices by 2016.
• Content snacking, with some movement toward longer-form. Robert Oberhofer, VP of solutions for Opera Software’s mobile video optimization company Skyfire, said that the length of video is actually getting shorter on the mobile network. The average video clip length viewed on Verizon’s network in 2012, he said, was about two minutes long. Now it’s more like 30 seconds – fueled by the ultra-short clips generated by Vine and Instagram, and the use of auto-play.
“We don’t see a lot of consumption of long-form content like HBO or Netflix,” said Oberhofer. While he said that is partly explained by human behavior – if you plan to watch an hour-long program, you’re most likely to do that at home – it also has to do with data bucket limits. “If you want to watch an hour-long movie over a mobile connection in HD, you’re very quickly going to go over your data limit,” he noted.
However, there are some signals that mobile consumers may be starting to dabble in long-form content. A June 2014 survey by 451 Research showed that 22% of consumers watch live TV on their phones at least once a week. A recent survey by ComScore showed that watching Netflix on mobile devices is sharply higher among millennials  — nearly half did so, compared to 36% of adults between the ages of 35 and 54.
• Consumer demand fueling changes in digital rights management. “The single biggest change we’re seeing at the moment, is that people are looking at making content more freely available,” said John Alexander, director of Level 3’s CDN business. He said that licensing rights are adjusting to involve different types of content delivery rather than traditional, linear, within-the-home viewing. Companies like HBO are starting to offer OTT plays, with HBO Go. Others are making content available either through their own websites or through content aggregators such as Hulu.
• New partnerships and pricing revolving around content. This is another aspect driving changes in DRM; as content owners look to expand their distribution beyond the home, they are making new partnerships. While brands such as the National Football League have long been successful in making partnerships for mobile access to their content, that realm is expanding. Spotify has been successful in striking deals for its music streaming service with T-Mobile US and TeliaSonera; T-Mobile US in particular has emphasized streaming music offerings that do not count toward its customers’ data buckets.
As telecom companies seek to compete with OTT players such as Netflix, they are adopting similar models. The new Shomi and Crave TV streaming services from Canadian operators, for instance, cost less than $10 per month, putting them on par with Netflix for pricing.
Want more information on consumer and network trends that are impacting content delivery to mobile devices? Register for RCR’s webinar on the topic, and look for our special report to be published Jan. 14.Â
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