As regional markets mature, TV makers are under increasing pressure to innovate their brands. It’s a brand new world as IP, content and TV collide and throw off new opportunities to add intelligence to the box.
DisplaySearch thinks the industry should look at the global TV market in a different way. Instead of thinking in terms of regions and sizes, the market researcher says we should understand our customers based on their usage.
Not a bad idea at all: segment the users by those who want basic essential broadcasting to those who prefer high-end hub-like usage. Those who want cutting edge IP services and those who don’t.
If the box is no longer dumb, then we have to be smart in understanding how segmentation will naturally occur anyways.
The connected TV takes "TVolution" far beyond mere broadcasting. DisplaySearch forecasts that opportunities will be found in overcoming critical challenges such as user education, an intuitive user interface and ways to uncomplicated OS platforms for content or media convergence.
According to forecasts from ABI Research, the estimated 19% of flat panel TVs shipping with Ethernet in 2010 will grow to 46% in 2013 as connectivity becomes a mainstream feature.
What will viewers see and interact with on these connected sets? According to industry analyst Michael Inouye, “New features will include media guides/browsing, web browsing, and more tightly integrated social and information-based datasets.” And an explosion of clever apps like iPhone has created.
“TV makers no longer want to build ‘dumb screens,’” says Inouye. “Rather than simply selling boxes, TV makers themselves could try to secure part of the revenue generated by ads their devices present.”
And why else do you think search-masters Google want so badly to get an Andriod enginen as the definitive search for all video on TV screens?
TV makers won’t provide all that content themselves, of course. Netflix, among others, has an app available for connected TVs. Each TV manufacturer’s combo of hardware and OS works in differently, so apps must be customized for each brand of television. That clobbers some app developers, but others with deeper wallets push ahead. And Google wants to solve that by offering Android (what "Windows" was for the PC, Android wants for the TV world).
Then there’s the new networking: on top of Wi-Fi, more robust wired formats, especially for HD content, can be in play. G.hn, HomePNA, MoCA, and Powerline are all contenders against the currently most robust solution, ethernet.
There are some efforts to standardize all this. An Android OS would help compatibility. Streaming via Cloud could help...But any initiative will take time..
Inouye concludes, “This market is very fluid and uncertain, and with so many parties vying for a piece of the action, that fluidity may persist for years.”
Fluidity represents both danger and opportunity for retailers. New brands will enter the market based on these game-changing technologies: who would have thought in USA that Vizio would be regularly number one or two brand for TVs? LCD technology enabled Vizio to jump in. Now consider how internet connectivity will create new players.
If Android succeeds, can it create an era of TV builders just as Wintel did in PCs? Stay tuned...
