Versatile Amphibian

I hear a lot of talk in the market about the challenge of format proliferation in streaming video delivery. The thinking goes that the number of devices that can stream video - phones, TVs, set top boxes - is growing and so content distributors must transcode into an increasing number of formats to service them. This creates a mare's nest of connections and formats to service consumer demand. I wonder whether we should also consider another world, where devices increase in processing power and application platforms become standardised across categories of devices (e.g. Android on TVs). In this world, distribution becomes a trial of bandwidth at the edge and possibly also in the core and the devices shoulder the burden of making viewing a rich experience. A similar thing happened when the mobile web was young. Operators spent tens of millions on hardware and software to enable web pages to be viewed on phones. It didn't take long, however, for phones to gain the processing power...

Reading an article on Microsoft putting Office into the cloud brought ' Directions on Microsoft ' to my attention. I'm very used to the idea of analysis firms pointed at particular market segments, but had never encountered one aimed at a particular company. The more I thought about it, the more this made sense to me. It occurs that the market of today is akin to science at the turn of the 20th Century. There is so much to discover in so many fields that the traditional 'expert' commentators on a field cannot hope to see everything, let alone consider the resulting implications. This effect is becoming more marked as (particularly technology) companies continue their acquisition sprees, bringing many more divisions and products into their portfolios. Perhaps just as gentlemen astronomers provided great insights into the cosmos, small, pointed analysis firms can help us make sense of the hyper-dynamic, information-saturated market of the twenty-teens. Something else ...

I've just read the Pew Research Center's annual survey on cloud computing . As ever, it contains plenty of thought-provoking commentary from experts. One that really caught my attention was this quote from Nokia's Davis Fields: "It's 2010 and I could already basically use only cloud-based applications on my computer. Local storage is already increasingly irrelevant – I have my all my photos stored on Flickr, my address book is in my Gmail and I've got all my emails stored there as well. Apple will likely move iTunes online in the next few years, and streaming movies from Netflix will eliminate the need to download movie files. I use Microsoft Office and Photoshop out of familiarity as my main two desktop apps, but good alternatives already exist online. I predict most people will do their work on ‘screens connected to the web,’ There won't be any sort of ‘computer’ anymore." Now, I agree with the sentiment that every screen will be connected to the web...

It struck me earlier today that the nascent market in unscheduled, IP-delivered TV is a bit atypical for a capital-intensive new product. There are literally hundreds of different products that do the same thing. Each broadcaster has gone down their own path at great expense, and has been joined by aggregators and a few relatively small tech' players (Brightcove, ThePlatform and the ill-fated Maven Networks, to name three). There is limited standardisation in technology or approach. I've talked to broadcasters, tech companies and Telcos - the future could be big, heavy infrastructure or a customer-centric interface with simple underpinnings. Even though the codecs are based on similar principles, they seem unique in flavour to each platform. The only thing they agree on is that 'on-demand' will one day be a larger proportion of viewing than linear. Incidentally, this is the only thing I'm convinced isn't true! This has confused me for a while. Until today, when ...

I attended a live video stream of the Future in Review conference on Wednesday. Although the format was unusual (even with a cinema screen and surround sound), several comments made by the speakers caught peeked my interest. During a conversation on the network implications of cloud services, it occured to me that the storage and processing of vast amounts of data in a central location is going to lead to significant latency problems. This in itself isn't great insight. Neither is the fact that network management is going to lead to distribution of content and processing around the edge of the network, based on statistical analysis of likely usage. I started wondering, however, whether that distribution is going to lead to 'systems' of usage, similar to the weather systems in the Earth's atmosphere. The Brownian motion of particles in the atmosphere is in some ways analagous to the 'motion' of packets in IP networks, with rate shaping and the variable speed of ...

Following yesterday's post, here's some related thinking on the impacts on operators of handset leasing. Handset sales represent around 25% of operator revenues in a typical European market, but generate only around 5% of margin. It may therefore be the case that the scenario described would lead operators to a more profitable structural model than exists today. Oil companies are consistently and acceptably profitable, despite being (literally in some cases) the ‘dumb pipe’ that operators are so desperate to avoid becoming. One of the reasons for the oil majors sustained profitability is clear focus on their role in the value chain – to supply the fuel that enables transportation, relying primarily on location, then brand and finally product innovation to compete. BP or Shell do not need to subsidise the purchase of a car in order to drive consumption of fuel because consumers are ‘hooked’ on it (it gets them from place to place) and there are many credible car manufacturers an...

I've been doing some more thinking about what the mobile industry could learn from the automotive. See what you think: The parallel between personal communication and personal transportation Although outwardly very different, mobile telephones and automobiles actually offer a similar consumer proposition, in that they provide a means of obtaining services, doing business and, most importantly, maintaining social contact. Both are a personal choice, as the vast range of styles available in each market demonstrates; moreover, both started out as niche, expensive fancies and have matured into mass market items. If automobiles and handsets are analogous, then there are also clear parallels between the mobile network and the network of fuel stations that support car travel. Both networks are spread out to provide coverage over a wide area and both have economics that vary significantly from location to location. One could even suggest that the recent interest in wi-fi bypass to increase...