Keeping Track of the Chinese DTV Market

Monday February 22, 2010 – Shelby Cunningham

Digital TV displays are being sold by the millions in China, and most of those are connected to a digital cable or DTH satellite set-top box, which means most LCD DTVs are nothing more than “DTV ready.” The market for digital TVs integrated with terrestrial, satellite, cable, or IPTV tuners is only in its most infant stage. It’s only a matter of time before large numbers of DTVs will include over-the-air tuners and connections to the Internet.

In 2009 DTC estimates that less than 3% of all LCD DTVs shipped in China contained tuners growing to about 6% of the market by 2011. In the meantime, the market for digital TV displays is exploding creating one of the world’s fastest growing digital TV markets.

All industry eyes are on the Chinese market and DTC is now offering a Domestic Chinese LCD DTV Quarterly Tracking Service, which is being produced with China-based RedTech Advisors. The service tracks quarterly shipments, brand market share, and component supplier market share in this rapidly growing market.

The timing for the tracking service is important. To date, the government regulator (SARFT) has emphasized the digitization of cable systems, but as most of the large cable systems are transitioned from analog to digital (in the 2012-2013 time frame) look for the government to place more emphasis on rolling out digital terrestrial TV. As more TVs with integrated DTT tuners and Internet access ship into the Chinese market, DTC believes the complexion of the DTV market will change dramatically in the next few years.

Source: Digital Tech Consulting and RedTech Advisors

Is Macworld Dead or Just the Beginning?

Monday February 15, 2010 – Antonette Goroch

This year’s Macworld marked a turning point for Apple, and the media industry at large, in both what was absent and present.

On the one hand Apple, which pulled out as a Macworld exhibitor last year, was gone for the first time, leaving attendance and exhibitors down by double digits. Gone was the traditional keynote from Steve Jobs announcing the latest and greatest in Apple’s technological evolution (the iPad was announced a couple of weeks ago). This absence was symbolic of Apple’s transformation from a niche computer maker with a devoted base of enthusiasts into a multimedia ecosystem of post-living room entertainment for the mainstream.

What dominated Macworld instead were mobile applications, expanding the utility of Apple’s mobile devices. Over 150,000 apps---a vast number---now fill the AppStore, many of which were on display, morphing iPhones, iPods and now iPads into an array of functionalities from entertainment to productivity, and from education to novelty.

The breadth represented is a microcosm of what Apple’s ecosystem has given rise to---a sum greater than its parts. It’s not about just single use devices anymore---a music/video player or a smartphone—but rather a family of devices with the ability to span many functions throughout a person’s daily life. Sure the announcement of the iPad was big news on its own, but it will be the applications and the content that truly give its ultimate value. And, Apple’s deals cut with book publishers, perhaps undoing the current e-books business model, is arguably more innovative than the iPad itself.

Perhaps this year’s Macworld is also symbolic of what Apple will ultimately have to do if its ecosystem is to survive---disappear. Not literally, of course, but in terms of further opening that ecosystem. To some extent Apple has already done this, through the release of its non-DRM iTunes music library last year. Its video library remains a closed system, though, and Apple still screens/controls all the apps in its AppStore, keeping the Apple ecosystem a highly controlled one.

If Apple can successfully transition its ecosystem into a more open one in terms of content and functionality, it will guarantee a future far more expansive than the humble enthusiast beginning embodied by Macworld.

If You Build It, They Will Videophone

Monday February 8, 2010 – Stewart Wolpin

Avatar's success is stoking 3D HDTV excitement, but another, more profound technological and sociological change is about to engulf the living room: the videophone.

Yes, futurists have been prognosticating ubiquitous videophones since, well, since futurists have been prognosticating; in 1964, the Bell System actually initiated a short-lived video telephone service between New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, and Dr. Heywood Floyd famously called his daughter on a space station pay video phone in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But all videophone efforts, either via standalone phones or TV add-ons, have necessitated the purchase of two phones (it takes two to video chat), and a iPhone-like consumer crush to buy a pair and create a critical mass of videophoning households.

Why hasn't widespread videophoning happened? It's been postulated that phone chatters simply wanted to be heard and not seen. But this assertion is belied by the popularity of PC-based video chatting. It's hard to find either a laptop or desktop PC without a built-in Web cam; it's this "if you build it, they will call" that is the secret to video telephony outside the office.

Skype is supplying this Phone of Dreams solution. A slew of net-enabled models from LG and Panasonic due later this spring will include Skype-powered high-definition videophone capabilities built-in.

Consumers initially will have to buy an LG- or Panasonic-specific webcam, each of which will have four built-in microphones, probably for around $100. But everyone acknowledges these add-on Webcams are a temporary situation. By the fall, it's likely a number of high-end HDTVs will include a webcam and microphone array built into the bezel, just like on PCs. Toshiba's CELL TV, for instance, will include a built-in webcam for videophoning, presumably using Skype, although the company has yet to officially say so.

Within a few years, it's likely all Web-connected HDTVs will include a built-in webcam for videophoning. And as people grow used to videophoning, landline phone makers, seeking any way to boost sagging sales, will launch Skype-powered video phones for other rooms in the house, and LTE-powered cellphones will include forward-facing cameras to enable video calls.

Within a decade, everyone could have videophones in each room of the house, and enable a whole new way of looking – literally – at phone sex.

Chatting it Up: Desktop Video Communications Explodes

Monday February 1, 2010 – Maya Jasmin

It’s no longer just for the big shots ensconced in expensively equipped board rooms. High-speed IP networks, low-cost web cams and improved video compression are letting the rest of us in on video conferencing and video chatting.

It has been a foregone conclusion that many consumers would embrace face-to-face video communications when quality improved (dramatically) and costs came way down. That time has come as video communications desktop application software represents a new and rapidly growing market. That area of growth is fueled by the prolific age of instant messaging where most major market participants include video chat in their applications. Now all you need is a webcam and a PC to see the faces of your contacts.

A few major desktop software application providers, such as Google (Gmail Video Chat) and Microsoft (Microsoft Live Messenger) use the AVC codec as their video compression technology. DTC estimates that in 2009 a little over 70 million first-instance downloads of the AVC codec onto PCs came from video instant messaging applications, and we expect 238 million AVC downloads to come from those applications in 2014.

The main competitor to AVC/H.264 in this market is On2’s proprietary video communication technology, which is used by Skype, AOL IM (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, TenCent QQ (Asia’s biggest provider), and ooVoo. Google is still actively pursuing the purchase of On2 so it remains to be seen where this acquisition will lead in terms of the desktop video communications market as a whole.

With an exact future of this market unknown and no current video technology winner, the field is seemingly wide open for video technology providers and explosive growth. This market encompasses all demographics of users from giddy school kids to doting grandparents, and every type of personal and business user in between. With friends, loved ones, and business associates just a click away this is definitely a market to keep an eye on!