To Deloitte to listen to their technology predictions for 2011. Paul Lee is their Global Director of Research and over the years I have heard him make some well thought out views on what the immediate future has in store. Today was no exception.
Some key takeaways from his view.
Tablet Computers will be big.
- This is so obvious it doesn’t merit further discussion.
Television’s ‘Super Media’ status strengthens in 2011.
- About 4.5 trillion hours of TV watched across globe in 2011
- BRIC Pay TV Revenue up 20%
- 2007 – TV has 38% share of advertising revenue
- 2010 – TV has 41% share of advertising revenue
- Viewing – 3 hours 12 minutes per day vs computer and social networking sites <45 minutes combined.
TV’s impact will grow. PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) proliferate and the impact of TV advertising remains largely unaffected. Ads viewed at 12x speed still have impact. More distinctive imagery will enhance the impact of fast forwarded ads. PVR owners however, actually usually watch live TV.
In 2011, the vast majority of TV programming will be pushed direct to consumers despite increasing prevalence of PVRs. Cost of search for the content you want is a significant barrier to entry. Strangely, consumer preference for live TV over on demand has moved from 68% – 78% between 1008 and 2010. Are consumers being given too much choice?
[Not covered today was the impact of companies like Boxee that make TV easy to sort, search and view. From what I have seen of Boxee, it solves some of these issues and does live up to its tagline, ‘TV as it should be’.].
Social network advertising: how big can it get?
Social networks will surpass milestone of one billion unique users. The value of social network advertising however has not yet been proven.
Three things govern value:
- CPMs,
- Time spent on network
- Subscriber growth
- CPM rates are low. [Facebook’s CPM is about 20% of advertising industry standard].
- Time spent on network is growing.
- As users reach saturation (there are about 2 billion people online worldwide), growth slows.
How impactful is advertising on social networks?
TV and email newsletters seem to generate far more value for advertisers than social networks. In survey, 9% of respondents said they responded to TV advertising or email newsletters frequently. The number for social networks was 2%.
Music
Two factors could soften live music revenues in 2011.
- The biggest touring acts are getting old, only 1 of the top 20 touring acts released their first album this millenium – Paul McCartney is 71 this year. Older people tour less!
- Economy has not recovered and live shows are a discretionary spend.
Getting to 4g cheaply
Cost of 4g network in UK would pay for 3/4 of rail network to be upgraded.
LTE will fall short of industry expectations. 130 carriers trialled LTE in 2010. 30 carriers globally will offer LTE in 2011.
- There is still lots of 3g capacity left.
- LTE performance increases are not significant enough to justify the cost – offering 20-100% increase in download speeds in real world environment.
Deloitte expects the global market for deploying LTE in 2014 is around $10 billion. This is not a significant sum.
WiFi complements cellular broadband for mobile on the move.
Mobile WiFi uptake is driven by:
- WiFi hotspots will proliferate.
- WiFi offers better battery life than 3g.
- WiFi chips are almost always incorporated in new data devices.
- Log in is easier/seamless.
- Carriers are abandoning unlimited data packages.
- Partnerships are forming between WiFi hotspot providers and mobile carriers.
3D Cinema will continue to grow, 3D TV, not so much.
There are too many technical and cultural challenges for 3D TV to become mainstream in 2011.
The undiscussed prediction: For my money, the most important prediction/comment in the full report that was not covered in this discussion was the excellent line,
‘Batteries don’t follow Moore’s Law’.
Batteries will probably become the biggest single limiting factor in the growth and penetration of smart mobile devices.
You can download the report here and find out more at: Deloitte Predictions.