Abstract
As the cellular world moves quickly into offering commercial TV services, it
is flanked by fixed network operators implementing quadruple-play strategies,
and content providers and web-based service providers implementing
multi-channel approaches, as well as by the consumer electronics industry
pushing into home networking. In our view, there are new forms of 'mobility'
for digital content appearing across the consumers' device and service
ecosystem. These need to be well understood to make sense of the future
converged world. This report takes a user-focused look at the issues and
opportunities, then develops some scenarios for how they will unfold.
This report has shown us that this is a large, complicated area inhabited by
players that come from several distinct industries - TV, PCs, cellular, other
consumer electronics and web-based services. Each of these is developing at a
different speed and approaching it in a different way. We find that cellular
operators and TV manufacturers are the groups that understand the new
behaviours and mobility the least well. A number of vendors, especially those
involved in cellular, have developed catchy visions for how the area will
unfold. However, generally we find that players are nibbling away at parts of
the issue and few are really trying to take an all-encompassing view and build
their strategy on that.
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