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Remember Jitterbug Phones For Seniors? Here’s The iPad Equivalent

ACMAir — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:29:59 +0000

Remember Jitterbug , the big-buttoned phones for seniors that made using those confusing, new-fangled cellphone thingies so much easier to handle? Well it looks like someone has gone out and built the equivalent for the iPad. Which literally made me laugh out loud when I read the news, because the iPad is the first computer I’ve ever seen seniors adopt in droves. But hello anyway, Family Ribbon . Everything about this app is funny. From the touted “health benefits” (apparently, a May 2012 Mayo Clinic study confirmed that a combination of exercising and using a computer may protect seniors against mild cognitive impairment!!!) to the stock photos of granny on iPad in the “how it works” section of the website. I’ll spare you the gory details. Here’s the pitch in a nutshell: the app, which is “officially” launching on May 30th but is live now in the iTunes App Store , is “an easy-to-use app for the iPad which features an easy-to-use interface that helps seniors and kids stay connected to their families online.” In case you missed that, it’s “easy to use.” Because really, the iPad is so hard. And this UI is clearly better: I’m sure the iPad’s complexity is why my 2-year has completely stolen mine, knows how to slide to unlock, flip through screens, launch and close apps, navigate within apps, and I’m pretty sure she’s already better than me at Angry Birds. Let’s get real here, kids are not the issue with adopting new technology. Seniors, however, often struggle. And while I do understand the need to offer them assistance, I’m not sure that, of all things, it’s the iPad that’s so confusing. Computers, yes. Windows, yes. Mac OS X, yes. But iPad? No. Sure, grandma and gramps might need a demo at the Apple Store or from you before they get it. But I’m not convinced they need something like this. I will give the app one shout out as its saving grace – it offers a remote administration feature which could come in handy. The confused user can push the “call back request” app for assistance which sends a text, email and phone call (wait… omg, it’s this, WUPHF lives !) and can then tap a button to share their screen. It’s a screenshot-snapping feature, to be clear, not true remote administration. Oh, and there’s an “easy Facebook” mode too: I’m sorry, I just fell out of my chair. Honestly, this may be the best thing I’ve seen on the Internet all day. The app was co-created by two ex-McKinsey consultants, CEO Ivan Osadchiy and Mykola Komarvsky. I was just going to decline to cover (Osadchiy wanted to talk about the “many health benefits” that this application will bring), but I found I couldn’t help but share this news. Back to your regularly scheduled Facebook IPO-salivating now.

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Remember Jitterbug Phones For Seniors? Here’s The iPad Equivalent

JumpTap: Kindle Fire Usage Has Declined After Holiday Boost, iPad Back To Pre-Fire Launch Levels

A D M I N — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:33:32 +0000

The Kindle Fire from Amazon has stolen a march in the tablet world, with some estimating that it now makes up more than half of all Android tablets in use in the U.S. today. But the latest monthly figures from mobile ad network JumpTap today paint a different picture in terms of usage. JumpTap noted that in the months after its launch, Amazon’s device rapidly picked up market share, reaching 33 percent of all traffic on its network in January 2012. But since then, the figure has gradually been in decline and is now at 22 percent. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPad — which had lost share to the Kindle Fire — is now back to 65 percent, or where it was before Amazon launched its tablet. JumpTap, which bases its numbers on ad impressions on its network, noted that the Fire tablet came its closest to the iPad’s traffic share in January, when the iPad’s share of traffic had declind down to 48 percent. Meanwhile, the rest of the tablet market seems to be stalling out: collectively, the others currently account for 14 percent of all traffic on JumpTap’s network, the same proportion they had for the past three months. In fact, the rest of the tablet market, excepting the iPad, seems to have been hit the worst by the rise of the Kindle Fire: together, they made up 31 percent of all traffic on JumpTap’s network back in November 2011 — in other words, their share has more than halved. So why the decline for the Kindle Fire, and the growth for the iPad? JumpTap attributes it to strong sales of the newest iPad. But it could also be that while the Kindle saw a big boost in purchases after its launch and during the holiday period, it could be that some of the novelty of the product has worn off and people are now using it less. However, important to note that JumpTap says that even as the Kindle’s share of traffic has declined, in real terms usage has actually increased three-fold over Q4 2011 as a result of the overall growth in tablet usage. It doesn’t give comparative traffic numbers for other devices.

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JumpTap: Kindle Fire Usage Has Declined After Holiday Boost, iPad Back To Pre-Fire Launch Levels

Crowdfunding: $1.5B Raised, 1M Campaigns Funded In 2011; Figures Set To Double In 2012

A D M I N — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:20:50 +0000

Well, it’s been quite a year already for the crowdfunding industry. With the JOBS Act becoming law , the tech industry (and the economy) are headed for some big changes. Namely, the legalization of crowdfunding in startups for non-accredited investors has come to pass. Yes, now your mom can invest in your startup. While most of the consequences of this legalization will play out in the future, the most well-known crowdfunding platform has been busy in the past, racking up a blockbuster season . If it weren’t there already, Kickstarter hit the tipping point in February, as it saw a number of record-breaking projects and landed squarely in mainstream consciousness thanks to a slew of media coverage. Yet, as crowdfunding prepares for its stampede, many have been asking just how active the industry has been to this point, collectively, especially as it may indicate what’s in store. Luckily, Massolution , a research firm that specializes in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, is today providing an answer with the first-ever Crowdfunding Industry Report . Having compiled data from more than 170 crowdfunding platforms (about 38 percent of the total number of platforms), Massolution found that, collectively, these portals raised $1.5 billion and successfully funded more than 1 million campaigns in 2011. It also seems that North America is the geography that is most cuckoo for crowdfunding, representing the largest market for fundraising at $837 million. As for the snapshot of the industry, as of April 2012, there were 452 active crowdfunding platforms worldwide, a number that the research firm expects to increase to 530 by the end of 2012. And, if I may interject, if my inbox is any indication, I would say it’s not unreasonable to expect that number to be higher. In terms of its compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the crowdfunding industry is growing at a rate of 63 percent in terms of the total amount of funds raised. To break the crowdfunding market down into bite-sized chunks, the research firm has identified and grouped the industry’s platforms into four major categories. Equity-based platforms grew at 114 percent CAGR, with the largest growth primarily taking place in Europe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the equity-based category also raised the largest sums per campaign, as over 80 percent raised over $25K+. The second category, donation-based platforms, defined by philanthropic or sponsorship incentives, raised the most funds at $676 million but were the slowest growing of the categories at 43 percent CAGR. Lending-based platforms, or person-to-person, person-to-business, and social models were the second largest category, raising $552 million and growing at 78 percent. Lastly, reward-based platforms, or non-monetary rewards portals, grew by a staggering 524 percent CAGR. However, the base from which lending-based platforms started (as these platforms are, of all, youngest) was fairly low, beginning at approximately $1.6 million in 2009. The report gives a very solid indication of just how much the crowdfunding industry has changed over the last few years (and will continue to change). It’s now more true than ever that these portals are being used to raise large sums of money, as crowdfunding itself has become a viable alternative for capital formation for new commercial ventures, said Carl Esposti, the CEO of Massolution and founder of Crowdsourcing.org. Driven in particular by equity-based and reward-based crowdfunding, he said, the firm is projecting that the total amount of funds raised will double in 2012. Naturally, there is little doubt that, with the passage of the JOBS Act, this growth is just beginning and that the new legislation will have, as Esposti says, a “profound effect” on the nature and incidence of crowdfunding in the U.S. With the SEC currently working out how it will regulate crowdfunding under new JOBS Act Era, Massolution expects securities-based crowdfunding to increase significantly in 2013 and will begin creating a host of new funding sources for many startups and early-stage businesses over the course of next year. For more on Massolution’s research methodology, or to view the report in full, click here .

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Crowdfunding: $1.5B Raised, 1M Campaigns Funded In 2011; Figures Set To Double In 2012

Another Move To Make The iPad Enterprise-Friendly: Harmon.ie’s iOS SharePoint Collaboration

Administrator — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:17:44 +0000

The iPad has, quite quickly, become the tablet of choice for enterprises, with some 97 percent of all tablet activations in Q1 of 2012 attributable to Apple’s tablet, according to Good Technology . So it comes as no surprise that apps are rushing into the wake of those purchases to make the iPad more work-friendly. The latest in that story is a release of some social software from harmon.ie that will make SharePoint, the collaboration software from Microsoft, usable on the iPad, as well as the iPhone. Harmon.ie’s CEO, Yakov Cohen, says this marks the first time that business users can access SharePoint from both the iPad and desktop with the same user experience. “Until now, you had solutions for business users only for the iPad or only for the desktop but not for both,” he says. Harmon.ie has carved out a niche for itself as an integrator for enterprises that want to incorporate more “social” collaboration tools into their workflow on Windows but have held off for problems of security on consumer-grade social networks or for the fact that workers are not necessarily going on the internet as much as they are nosing around their own networks working on email. The company says it already has 1 million people using its existing edition for Outlook, which which adds social features and collaboration to a user’s Outlook mail and calendar applications. Putting SharePoint accessbility on the iPad gives harmon.ie a lot of potential in tapping a big market that has yet to be served: some 78 percent of corporate America already uses SharePoint, according to Forrester, with half of their workday (yes — half!) spent in email. Microsoft, perhaps understandably, has not created iPad and iPhone support for SharePoint itself. The new service lets users create a presentation, drop it into SharePoint, send a link to colleagues via harmon.ie in Outlook or IBM’s Lotus Notes. Then users in that worker’s circle can subsequently access those documents on their PCs or their iPads (or iPhones). The system allows for both offline and online collaboration. The product is available as a free, read-only version, and a full version for $19.99 that lets users edit and collaborate on documents on the SharePoint platform. An MDM version, allowing for more secure connections, will be available in Q2, the company says. Similarly, support for Android and Windows 8 coming “in future,” says Cohen. (harmon.ie for iPad is HTML5-based, he says, which makes it relatively painless to provision it for all HTML5-based platforms.)

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Another Move To Make The iPad Enterprise-Friendly: Harmon.ie’s iOS SharePoint Collaboration

LinkedIn’s Mobile Future: 22 Percent Of Visitors Are Mobile, In-Stream Ads Coming?

ACMAir — Fri, 04 May 2012 02:58:31 +0000

During the conference call this afternoon for their first quarter earnings , LinkedIn executives boasted about the impressive mobile growth they’re seeing. In the last week of March, the company says mobile accounted for 22 percent of unique visitors, up 8 percent from the same period last year. And although he wouldn’t share any numbers, CEO Jeff Weiner said adoption of the recently launched iPad app has exceeded the company’s “aggressive” expectations. Weiner mentioned the iPad app again when asked about the areas where the company is strongest right now. But one analyst asked: Is that entirely a good thing? Since LinkedIn (and other Web companies) have been slower to monetize on mobile, could the shift actually hurt the company’s revenue? Weiner argued that it should be “accretive” because “our intention is to bring all of our business lines into the mobile environment.” That means premium members should get premium access on the mobile app, and yes, it also means mobile advertising. Weiner has already talked about his plans to bring ads to the app , but he offered a few more details today. For the iPad app, the ads will probably resemble those already found on the website. On the other hand, since smartphones have less screen real estate, the company will be experimenting with custom ad types designed specifically for the iPhone and Android, such as promoting companies to follow or posting relevant ads in the news stream.

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LinkedIn’s Mobile Future: 22 Percent Of Visitors Are Mobile, In-Stream Ads Coming?

New iPad Ship Time Improves To 3-5 Days At Apple.com

Achilles — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:44:54 +0000

The new iPad is nearly two months old and it’s still not available for immediate shipping from Apple. However, the wait time just improved to less than a week. Apple.com now lists all the new iPad variations with just a 3-5 day wait time. Happy days. “[We're] selling as fast as we can make them,” said Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said on last week’s earnings call. The iPad is clearly a hit and up until now, buyers had to wait more one or two weeks when purchasing from Apple’s online store. Unfortunately buyers in overseas markets will still have to wait more than a week. US buyers have other options besides Apple.com, though. Best Buy, Target and Walmart stock and sell the new iPad within their brick and mortar stores but a quick online search reveals that the stores have a limited amount of stock as well. The Apple Store is also a good bet. This is par for the course. It generally takes several months for the iPad and iPhone demand to dip down to realistic supply levels. Until that happens, buying one often requires patience and blinders. Yeah, Best Buy might have a whole warehouse full of Android tabs available to take home immediately, but trust me, the iPad is worth the wait.

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New iPad Ship Time Improves To 3-5 Days At Apple.com

Down, Not Out: Nokia Goes On The Offensive With 11 Lawsuits Against HTC, RIM And ViewSonic Covering 45 Patents

bestcbstore — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:25:08 +0000

As Nokia continues to try to turn itself around as a mobile phone business, it is also playing on the offense in the legal game: today it announced that it has filed fresh round of patent suits — 11 in all — against HTC, RIM and Viewsonic across courts in the U.S. and Germany, covering some 45 patents, all told. The suits go to show that a company like Nokia has a lot more arsenal in its stores to fight against competitors as it struggles win business with consumers. The fact that it has so many patents among its assets also means that there is significantly more value to this company than just its handset business. These cases also represent new, legal patent ground in two ways that indicate Nokia is getting more aggressive in litigation (perhaps in inverse variation to its other fortunes): Although there have been patent cases between Apple vs Nokia, and Apple vs HTC, Nokia tells me this is the first time that it has filed cases against any of these companies. Nokia says that it has licensing deals with 40 companies covering standards-essential patents but the patents included in these cases appear to be outside of those deals: “Nokia had to file these actions to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies, which have not been widely licensed,” noted Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia, in a statement. Nokia says the patents concern “proprietary innovations” in hardware capabilities that involve dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios. Software features including app stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device are also included in the list. Nokia says that it owns about 10,000 patent families. Recent research from Chetan Sharma noted that makes Nokia one of the biggest patent holders of all in mobile — although the rate at which it’s putting claims on to IP has slowed significantly as the company has cut costs and hunkered down for growth: It looks like there are 11 separate cases in this latest patent dispute: a complaint to the US International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, a suit against HTC in the Federal District Court of Delaware, a suit against Viewsonic in the Federal District Court of Delaware, a suit against HTC in the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, Germany, a suit against RIM in the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, Germany, and suits against all three companies in the Regional Courts in both Mannheim and Munich, Germany (making six more suits). In the meantime, Nokia has had another depressing quarter in terms of its own results, an in terms of how well its competitors did. Nokia declined in almost every metric in its Q1 earnings two weeks ago , with sales falling by $4 billion to $9.2 billion and smartphone sales down by more than fifty percent both in terms of units and revenue. It has lost out to Samsung, by most accounts, as the world’s leading phone vendor, with smartphones increasingly looking like a two-horse race between Samsung and Apple. Ironically, the two companies also getting the short end of the competitive stick against Apple and Samsung are none other than HTC and RIM. Full statement below Nokia takes new steps to protect its innovations and intellectual property Patent suits filed against HTC, RIM and Viewsonic in the US and Germany Espoo, Finland – Nokia has filed claims in the United States and Germany alleging that products from HTC, RIM and Viewsonic infringe a number of Nokia patents. “Nokia is a leader in many technologies needed for great mobile products,” said Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia. “We have already licensed our standards essential patents to more than 40 companies. Though we’d prefer to avoid litigation, Nokia had to file these actions to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies, which have not been widely licensed.” Nokia’s actions include a complaint to the US International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, suits against HTC and Viewsonic in the Federal District Court of Delaware, US, against HTC and RIM in the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, Germany and against all three companies in the Regional Courts in Mannheim and Munich, Germany. In total, 45 Nokia patents are in suit in one or more of the actions. Nokia proprietary innovations protected by these patents are being used by the companies to enable hardware capabilities such as dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, as well as to enhance software features including application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device. “Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia products,” Pentland concluded. “We’d rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations, but as these actions show, we will not tolerate the unauthorized use of our inventions.” About Nokia Nokia is a global leader in mobile communications whose products have become an integral part of the lives of people around the world. Every day, more than 1.3 billion people use their Nokia to capture and share experiences, access information, find their way or simply to speak to one another. Nokia’s technological and design innovations have made its brand one of the most recognized in the world. During the last two decades, Nokia has invested over EUR 45 billion in research and development and built the wireless industry’s strongest and broadest IPR portfolio, with around 10,000 patent families. Nokia is a world leader in the development of handheld device and mobile communications technologies, which is also demonstrated by Nokia’s strong patent position.

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Down, Not Out: Nokia Goes On The Offensive With 11 Lawsuits Against HTC, RIM And ViewSonic Covering 45 Patents

It’s Finally Here: Spotify Launches Its Long-Awaited iPad App

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:59:45 +0000

Today, Spotify is releasing its long-awaited iPad app — finally giving Apple tablet users, who also have a Spotify Premium (paid) subscription, a native route to accessing its 17-million song catalog. It will be worth seeing whether pent-up demand for the app will translate into a rush of downloads and usage, in the same way that Spotify saw around its (also long-awaited) U.S. launch last year . On the back of that, the U.S. has become Spotify’s fastest-growing market, with the company projected to make $889 million in revenues this year on a global user base of 13 million people and counting. In an interview last month , Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek noted that the company’s entire focus is on growth. “That is priority one, two, three, four and five,” he said. The company currently has 3 million users of its premium services, and the launching of this iPad app is a natural progression in the strategy to grow that number. But while Spotify, with its emphasis on unlimited streaming rather than downloading, has been a game changer in digital music, this tablet app may not totally live up to that description. On the positive side, the app benefits from the predictive search that Spotify’s iPhone app sorely lacks. And the iPad app is an improvement in other ways over Spotify’s the iPhone app, largely because of the tablet form factor. For example, in full-screen mode you get big buttons to control music playing. And you can search for playlists, users and music all from the same page view. AirPlay integration lets users link up the app with compatible stereo equipment to extend the experience beyond the app. But there are some negatives, too. Perhaps most importantly, the overlaid interface looks confusing, and retina cover art can’t be shown entirely full screen. Spotify’s tablet edition, in that sense, feels more like a translation from the desktop version. And in one key way, the iPad app lacks in comparison: it does not feature Spotify’s app platform. So while there have been some apps created to help with a perennial problem of Spotify’s — discovery — you don’t get them here. Not today, at least. Also, there is no automatic way of seeing what you’ve been listening to most lately. We’ve been waiting long for this app, with Spotify only promising up to now that it was “ in the works ,” so the company does get points for its video poking fun at the late launch . But in the end, Spotify for iPad still seems to lag behind MOG and Rdio’s tablet apps .

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It’s Finally Here: Spotify Launches Its Long-Awaited iPad App

Finally, Professional Social Network LinkedIn Gives Users An iPad App

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:00:27 +0000

Although the iPad has been available for more than two years, LinkedIn has yet to offer its users a native app despite the fact that mobile engagement has been growing at a fast pace for the network. But last August, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that the company is doubling down on its mobile strategy. And the network then debuted new versions of its iPhone and Android apps as well as an HTML5 mobile site. In fact, LinkedIn now says 22 percent of its active members have been visiting on mobile device. And today, LinkedIn is finally launching its native iPad app to the public. As LinkedIn’s head of mobile products Joff Redfern explains, the app was built with the user and tablet interface in mind. Since the iPad has become a leanback experience, LinkedIn wanted to make sure that the app satisfied iPad users’ needs. Via the web, LinkedIn noticed that iPad users were visiting the site mostly in early in the morning, which they call a “coffee session,” and in the evening, between 7 pm and 11 pm,. With this data, the company wanted to build an application that allowed professionals to start the day and end the day with LinkedIn. Via an updates section, users can access a stream of updates from your connections, including who’s changed jobs, who’s viewed your profile. You can also access news that connections are sharing and see the latest discussions from the groups you are members of. In addition to an activity stream, you can also access your own profile, connections and activity dashboard and send and receive your LinkedIn invitations and messages from your inbox in the network. One of the more compelling features included in the iPad app is the ability to sync the device’s calendar with your LinkedIn profile information. So you can have a schedule of what your meetings are for the day paired with contextual information about contacts from their LinkedIn profiles. This feature is also available with the latest upgrade of LinkedIn’s iPhone and Android apps. As Redfern explains, many users on the mobile devices were doing the most searches for contacts right before meetings, so it made sense to add the feature. And LinkedIn is debuting an iPad-friendly mobile website as well. by visiting touch.linkedin.com. While the app is available in English today, LinkedIn will soon launch the app in other languages. Although LinkedIn offered its users iOS and BlackBerry apps, it took the professional social network a few years to launch a native Android app, so it’s not entirely surprising that it has taken the company a while to develop an iPad app as well. Redfern explains that Linkedin had three dedicated engineers working on the app. As for what’s next, Redfern says LinkedIn will be monitoring what makes sense when it comes to developing an Android tablet app. TechCrunch TV reporter Colleen Taylor sat down with Redfern to demo the app and chat about what’s new. Watch below. Colleen Taylor contributed to this article.

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Finally, Professional Social Network LinkedIn Gives Users An iPad App

Riding The Third Wave of TV Transformation

Administrator — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:50:32 +0000

Eric Elia ( @ericelia ) is a member of the founding team at Brightcove, and is currently the vice president of TV solutions. Brightcove, a video and app solutions provider, went public on Feb. 17 on the NASDAQ and now trades with a market cap of $509.3 million. When we started Brightcove seven years ago, we expected a five-to-10-year transformation period until we reached a world of purely Internet-based, on-demand TV, motion pictures and “long tail” content. Sometimes it’s hard to see change happen when we are in the middle of it, but amazing to look back and see just how far we’ve come. I look at the past seven years as driven by three waves of innovation. The first wave of TV transformation was the “Hey kids, let’s put on a show,” period of experimentation and naiveté. Return on investment wasn’t that important yet. In fact it wasn’t really possible. Audiences were too small and monetization infrastructure was not robust enough. It was in these early days when an innovator like Kenny Miller (of MTV Networks, at the time), could take a risk and learn from it, and another cable programming exec would ask in a meeting, “Do you think people really want to watch video over the Internet?” Flash video changed everything. No special plug-ins. Designers could stop building those horrible pop-up video ghettos and begin to integrate video seamlessly into the rest of their user experiences. We did our share of MTV Overdrive-style players at Brightcove, but knew that contextual video like this would change everything. The second wave was about mainstreaming the video pilot project into the primary digital business. Video teams were born. Monetization and measurement became important, as they should for any legitimate business. In particular, the advertising business matured quickly. We were delighted to see the ecosystem grow and innovation come by working with our friends at companies like FreeWheel, Tremor Video, TubeMogul and YuMe. The same execs (literally) who asked if people really wanted to watch video over the Internet were now talking about mid-roll, companions and VAST. We’re now in the middle of the third wave of TV Transformation. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to Netflix, LoveFilm, Vudu, Apple and Amazon for making it okay to put a price tag next to a video (or a smorgasbord of videos as the case may be). And thanks to Apple again for the iPad, which changed everything. Beginning last year we saw a surge of interest in two things – premium, pay-based content and multi-screen experiences. Smart TVs and the great Roku platform showed up on everyone’s radars. I think there’s a Netflix-of-[pick a nation] site either live or launching in dozens of countries. The opportunity and consumer expectations have never been greater, the technical challenges and fragmentation never more formidable. Underneath the hood this means: Smart video players that must detect the device the viewer is on and serve an appropriate experience (monetized and measured, of course). Digital rights management (DRM) software, for better or worse. Many hope that movies and TV follow music to a world of no DRM, as creating less friction for consumers is generally good for business. For now, though, it’s up to companies like Brightcove, and our partners and competitors, to make content security as seamless as possible from an end user perspective, as well as for for video publishers. There’s a lot of pain involved with end-to-end DRM – from encoding and ingestion to license serving. Extensibility. Xbox 720? Roku 3? The 2013 Smart TV platforms? We pray these are backward compatible. It’s impossible to future-proof every solution, but important to stay nimble. That means picking the right platforms and the right technology partners. DIY is a myth. If you are a media company building all your own technology, you are kidding yourself. Somewhere in your technology stack you start using third-party stuff. Where do you draw that line? The decision isn’t build vs. buy, but how to keep pace. If we are in year seven of a 10-year transformation, what do the next three years hold? I think we can all start to glimpse the future now, but it’s going to be fun to see which winners emerge. Here are some of the tensions I think we’ll see resolved over the next few years. Dumb TV vs. Smart TV Let’s face it; the iPad is more a small TV than a big phone. If you’ve been to a trade event in the past year you’ve seen the numbers. People love watching TV on their iPads. At Brightcove, we’ve seen a steady increase in video consumption on the iPad in the last year. There has been a lot of criticism of Smart TV user experiences; and while things are improving, the experience of searching, browsing and interacting with media user interfaces is just better on smartphones and the iPad. One possible way this plays out is for these devices to be used for what they are good at, and throw your video up to your TV via AirPlay, Wi-Fi Direct and similar technologies. TV Everywhere buffet vs. a la carte consumption For people who watch a lot of TV, the cable and satellite industry’s TV Everywhere initiative is a great value. Sign in with your existing pay TV credentials to watch what you already pay for, on what devices you want. There have been a lot of business hang-ups stalling the rollout of TV Everywhere, but things seem to be accelerating finally. On the other hand, I’m pretty excited to have just bought a current Mad Men season pass off of iTunes. HD. No commercials. Portability. OTT buffet vs. a la carte consumption This is the year we’ll start to see a lot of competition for Netflix in the U.S. The patterns we’ve observed in music will start to emerge in video, with the video equivalents of Rdio and MOG coming to life. Viewers will be able to buy single episodes, full seasons and custom programming packages from a variety of retailers. Fragmentation vs. standards It appears that technologies such as HTML5, H.264 and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) are becoming relatively standardized, even on some stalwart smart TV platforms. But there’s always change on the horizon. MPEG-Dash? H.265? Do Android tablets become popular this year? Next year? The pace of change seems to be increasing. The next few years will see dramatic shifts in how viewers find and watch movies and TV shows, and how video publishers pay for and distribute their programming.

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Riding The Third Wave of TV Transformation