Emerging Media Technologies: Planning and Techno-economics
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Emerging Media Technologies: Planning and Techno-economics
by John Yip RTHK
Introduction
Since the publication in late 2005 of an ABU Technical Review paper entitled “Planning and Development in the New Digital Age” by the author, when the broadcasting skyline was largely clear, it has become quite unpredictable and increasingly “cloudy”. The multi-platform development has confounded both the broadcasters and consumers. There have been major advances in digital media technologies, broadcast technologies and consumer electronics. Single one-atom transistors are now in the laboratory. New content delivery methods and consumer behaviors are continually evolving. Traditional broadcasters are being ushered by new consumer habits into unknown waters. As the consumers are leaning forward instead of sitting back in the lounge room, the broadcasters have to re-assess their business strategies.
In order to help the broadcasters understand the myriad of techno-social/economic factors linking the various media technologies and the consumers and to enable them to be better prepared for the challenges, an analytical model called RPMO was postulated; examples of its application have been described in recent years in ABU digital broadcast symposiums and on the web.
The Future Media World
The future media world will be multi-platform based. It will be more immersive, exciting, wide-ranging, accessible and sophisticated for the consumers. Businesses are looking for opportunities but will face escalated investment risks. From traditional movies, terrestrial/cable/satellite TV, operators are moving into an environment characterised by high mobility, multi-platforms, frequent mergers and acquisitions, the consumer moving from the passenger’s to the driver’s seat, strong growth of internet-based services and of mobile devices, and rapid increases in daily internet-video consumption. The emerging/ new media world will be full of surprises, exciting for the consumers but not always so for the unwary investors. On the horizon, the broadcasters are expected to fully embrace 3D-TV, OTT, UHDTV and Social TV, whist HDTV, IPTV, Mobile TV and DAB+ will continue to grow.
The future media world presents challenges, opportunities and risks to the traditional broadcasters. It is a world of Davids and Goliaths where David is a young, innovative, fast-growing, agile and sharp-eyed emerging media company and Goliath is a big, often slow, traditional media operator
who has to learn to be more agile. Should Goliath play the game of David and learn how to throw stones? It depends, but nevertheless it should learn how to survive in the competition.
There are at least two fundamental issues for the broadcasters to remember. Firstly, the consumers must be happy with any new services; they are constantly seeking a higher value for money and a higher quality of experience (QoE). They will invariably ask two questions: how much (ie affordability) and whether it is worth it (ie on considering the opportunity cost). Secondly, consumer viewing/listening habits do not change rapidly and will evolve gradually, thus offering sufficient time for the operators to implement appropriate market-entry strategies.
RPMO: An Analytical Model
The model was initially hypothesised in order to encapsulate the whole range of influencing factors (technological, economic, social, etc.) lying between a consumer media technology and the consumer, for a particular economy. It does not stand for revenue-per-month, but it is ultimately related to it.
It is a simple, first-order analytical model applicable to a single technology platform eg IPTV, for a particular economy (region, country or city). It can be extended to multi- platform analyses by evaluating the differences eg IPTV vs. OTT. Furthermore, it can be applied to the analysis of a service-only platform eg LBS (Location-Based Service), by changing one of the sub-factors O3 (ie from Device Attributes to Service Attributes), as explained later.
The model is best understood by referring to Figure 1 (Conceptual Diagram) and to Figure 2 (Generic Equation). The “soft factors” ie R, P, M, O are more controllable than the “hard factors” ie g (geo-physical) and G (macro- economic). Please note that the O factor (where O stands for “Other”) in turn comprises four sub-factors (O1 to O4).
The hard factors are the critical ones for the operator to consider during a start-up; these factors are also used for comparing technological growths (in terms of TVH penetration per annum) in different economies, for a selected media technology eg Mobile TV. Technology per se is not explicitly stated in the equation; the consumer does not actually care about what a media technology is called by the manufacturers or broadcasters; the names tend to be changing in the market. The “triangle” of Pricing, Device
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