Yankee Groups, più audio che video sul 4G

Malgrado le motivate obiezioni del World DMB Forum sui costi reali della distribuzione di contenuti audio su reti Ip, la crescente capillarità delle infrastrutture broadband mobili mette inevitabilmente sotto pressione il mondo broadcast e le sue ambizioni digitali. Yankee Group ha appena pubblicato un conciso report "4g fuels the decade of disruption" formulando una serie di previsioni sul potenziale delle future reti radiomobili di quarta generazione. Secondo la società di analisi di mercato la larga banda mobile 4G non sarà - tanto per cambiare - il presupposto del successo del video in mobilità. Al contrario, i numeri più interessanti arriveranno dalle "app" mobili e da servizi musicali come Pandora o Slacker, non tanto per questioni di larghezza di banda disponibile ma per il livello di attenzione che il video richiede e che gli utenti mobili non saranno in grado di prestare.

Lo studio può essere scaricato gratuitamente previa compilazione di un modulo di richiesta. Il comunicato stampa si può leggere qui.

Prediction 8: Mobile Video Will Not Drive Consumers to 4G

The Upshot: Despite huge bandwidth demands, video won’t move consumers to 4G. Mobile apps and Web browsing will continue to drive revenue on upgraded networks.

4G consumer adoption will ramp up the mobile app gold rush going on today (see the March 2010 Yankee Group Report, “The Mobile App Gold Rush Speeds Up”). The average 4G user today downloads eight apps every 90 days compared with only six apps every 90 days for non-4G users. Based on this fact and our prior research, Yankee Group predicts mobile apps will exceed U.S.$5.4 billion globally in app revenue for 2011.

Despite the prodigious amounts of network bandwidth video applications consume, they do so largely on behalf of only 30 percent of mobile users—those who watch video at least once a week. Mobile video use isn’t just constrained by bandwidth, but also by how much undivided attention mobile consumers can spend on video. Without today’s constraints on mobile bandwidth, we see consumers increasing their use of music services such as Pandora and Slacker—which can be enjoyed while consumers do other mobile activities (such as driving or walking)—more than their video consumption. We expect Web browsing and mobile apps to remain the vast majority of 4G network use for the foreseeable future.

Companies such as Smule, Chillingo, DataViz and others that have invested in serious mobile app development and production will either grow to become mega-businesses or be acquired by other companies that already are mega-developers. The losers will be those companies that have spent millions to develop pay mobile video platforms that largely go unused through 95 percent of a 4G user’s day. Companies such as Flo TV have already gone bust; expect more to join their ranks as unpaid video distributors such as YouTube continue to dominate the majority of 4G video usage.