Our detailed analysis of the consumer markets in the UK and Brazil shows some common trends and highlights important differences. Beyond the triple play, innovation is sparse, particularly in the UK. So what can telcos do to grow?
The delivery of ‘mixed reality’ experiences through various forms of AR / VR ‘glasses’ is improving, and Apple may be planning to enter the fray alongside other heavyweight players such as Amazon and Google. We review the realistic timescales, and the opportunities for telcos.
What the leading on-demand entertainment specialists – Netflix and Spotify – will need to do the mount a serious challenge to GAFA in the top tier of Internet platforms and how telcos can help them make the online world more competitive.
The music industry was one of the first sectors to be fundamentally disrupted by the Internet. Facing an epic and almost existential battle with piracy, coupled with expectations that music should be free, the record labels have tested many different business and distribution models. With sales of recorded music finally growing again, telcos and their partners can learn a lot from the music industry’s hits and misses.
With iPhone sales apparently peaking, Apple is looking to double its revenue from services over the next four years to approximately US$50 billion, taking it deeper into adjacent markets, such as entertainment, financial services and communications. However, Apple trails behind Google in developing artificial intelligence and needs to extend the reach of its services to capture more behavioural data. If Apple decides to decouple more of its key services from its hardware, that would have major ramifications for Google, Amazon, Facebook and many of the world’s leading telcos.
The rapid growth of Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat and other Internet-based services has prompted some commentators to write off telcos in the consumer communications market. But many mobile operators retain surprisingly large voice and messaging businesses and still have several strategic options. Indeed, there is much telcos can learn from the leading Internet players’ evolving communications propositions and their attempts to integrate them into broad commerce and content platforms. In this report we examine what opportunities still exist for telcos in this strategically important sector.
Online entertainment is increasingly dominated by 5 big platforms but 6 forces are likely to shape the market going forward and could have profound effects on the dominant platforms. We analyse the relative strengths and weaknesses of each player and explore the potential opportunities for telcos to compete and collaborate.
Over 5 years, BT Group’s share price has more than tripled, outperforming Apple’s and Google’s, while its revenues have shrunk. Why, and what can other telcos learn from its success?
Netflix’s success in the US and in Western Europe has demonstrated that consumers are willing to change how they watch and pay for TV and movies. As a result Netflix’s OTT proposition is challenging traditional pay TV models and changing how new broadband services are looking at content. For some players Netflix is a threat and for others an opportunity. So, how should content owners, channels, pay platforms and broadband providers respond?
For mobile entertainment services to generate revenues commensurate to the attention they receive, the industry needs to improve ‘discovery’ tools, create more effective creative inventory, and deliver proof of its effectiveness. A summary of the Digital Entertainment 2.0 session of the 2013 Silicon Valley Brainstorm, held on the 20th March 2013, Intercontinental Hotel, San Francisco. (April 2013)
Digital Entertainment 2.0: What Gets Measured Gets Money
In the next 10 years, many industries face the ‘Great Compression’ in which, in addition to the pressures of ongoing global economic uncertainty, there is also a major digital transformation that is destroying traditional value and moving it ‘disruptively’ to new areas and geographies. For the incumbent industry players we call the near-term results of this disruption ‘The Digital Hunger Gap’ – the widening deficit between past and projected revenues. This is our analysis of the top-level findings of the Silicon Valley Executive Brainstorm. (March 2013, Executive Briefing Service, Transformation Stream.)
10 Year Hunger Gap Mar 2013