We don’t do this very often folks, but as a seasonal gift we have made our 2011 Digital Home Predictions report available to everyone, whether a Strategy Analytics client or not. You can download the full report here. A lot of the talk at the moment is about Google’s troubles with its TV offer: there will be little to see at CES after all, much to the annoyance of Google’s many partners no doubt. But this setback should not be seen as a a sign of general malaise in the connected TV industry: Apple has just reported that its TV solution is finally gaining some traction, and we expect continued progress from other key players in the rollout of internet TV to the big screen during 2011. We may even see Facebook moving into this space. Headline number of the year will be tablet revenues, which we predict will exceed netbooks. We also think Apple needs to revamp iTunes to take account of the connected device era, and Nintendo may have to take the plunge and launch the successor to the Wii. We’ll see further innovations in the TV control arena, with touchscreens, phone apps and motion control all featuring more widely. But 3DTV is likely to see only slow progress: sure, people will be buying 3D-enabled sets, but less than 20% will be watching 3D content on them. And one more stat to whet your appetite: more than one billion people worldwide will be using social networks for the first time during 2011. And since you are one of them, please go ahead and read the full report, and any comments and feedback are always appreciated. Best wishes for a peaceful holiday season. David Mercer Client Reading: Profiling the Connected Media Consumer - UK

We hate to say I told you so but as we wrote when Sky Songs was launched little over a year ago, this lacklustre venture into online music was unlikely to succeed from the start.   Originally Sky Songs offered access to four million tracks for download and unlimited streaming in two versions, £6.49 per month (1 £6.49 album or 10 songs per month + unlimited streaming) or £7.99 per month (1 £7.99 album or 15 songs per month + unlimited streaming). In an attempt to boost subscriber uptake, Sky later slashed the price to £5 per month but still failed to gather much interest from consumers. In a statement, Sky Songs said that "regrettably we've not been able to reach a large enough customer base in order for the service to continue". As we suggested in our original assessment of Sky Songs, this uncharacteristically lackluster service from Sky added little of value to consumers and was doomed to fail. Martin  Client Reading: Digital Media Index: Q3 2010

Having tested Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect for the last few days I can confirm that it has the elusive wow factor. Controlling on-screen icons and menus with a wave of the hand is the first sign that this stuff is definitely not of the old generation. Seeing your own avatar mirror your movements introduces the real sense of spookiness which only comes with genuinely ground-breaking technology. And when you are first signed into the service simply by entering the room, the realisation dawns that the age of intelligent technology may finally be upon us. My other conclusion is that if you are not physically fit before you buy Kinect, you certainly will be after a few sessions of gameplay. Microsoft is very clear that the initial raft of Kinect games titles are aimed at its “non-traditional” audience (implying, not entirely accurately, spotty teenagers shooting each other from the comfort of oversized armchairs) and involve varying levels of energy expenditure from a standing position. You may or may not be relieved to know that there is at least one application which does not require you to abandon the sofa: VideoKinect is the built-in video communications service, allowing Kinect games players to take a break to share their exhausting exploits with friends and relatives around the world. As for the games themselves, we found the bowling and track and field in Kinect Sports a lot of fun. Bowling illustrates the strengths of gesture-based gaming because the system appears to recognise genuine bowling actions which are impossible for any controller system to replicate. Track and field includes a variety of athletics events, and, yes, the 100m dash involves running on the spot as fast as you can. Microsoft told me that an elderly 80-year old lady in Australia had enjoyed some of these sports. I would like to see this. Children will love Kinectimals, the classic cutsey furry animal petting game. Choose your favourite cub, cuddle it with your virtual hands, and watch it mimic your actions and learn tricks. Parents of young children should avoid installing this game on their main TV as they will never get to watch TV again. Kinect Joy Ride didn’t work as well for me. This is the main racing game available at launch, and, yes, you have to pretend to hold a steering wheel. I would love this to have worked more effectively, but this is the point at which virtualisation just doesn’t seem to make any sense. Try it at home: See how long you can keep your hands spaced the same distance apart while moving them around in a circle, changing direction frequently, and leaning your body one way or the other to perform tricks. Sorry, but holding a real steering wheel has just got to be a better experience. Microsoft hope that Kinect will help it to “more than double” the number of Xbox 360s sold worldwide so far, which is more than 42 million. Our own core scenario forecast is that Microsoft will fall slightly short of this objective, selling a cumulative 79 million 360s by 2015. Our analysis did allow for further upside to 360 sales as a result of a successful Kinect launch, so we will be tracking its near term progress and impact on core console sales before updating our scenario models. We should also be clear that Microsoft, along with other platform vendors, tends to talk in terms of cumulative sales. Our analysis also takes account of console retirement and replacement, and this could be a critical issue as we begin to understand Kinect’s impact on wider 360 ownership. It is, after all, being offered for sale as a peripheral to existing 360 owners, as well as packaged with a complete 360 console system. Again, the mix between these two packaging options will be important in determining the real impact on the 360’s overall performance. Sales to existing 360 owners may extend the life of the system in those households but will not help to widen the audience. Microsoft’s primary interest will be to increase sales of the 360 itself to new owners. Will Kinect succeed? As always, it will depend on how we define success. Kinect is certainly innovative, and as such it will appeal to existing 360 owners who want to explore the new technology for its own sake or find the new games appealing. Kinect should also bring the 360 more forcefully to the minds of existing owners of other consoles who may be tiring of their current platform. The obvious target is Nintendo’s Wii, global sales of which, as we predicted, are declining by more than 20% this year. While Nintendo works out its post-Wii strategy, Kinect has a window of opportunity of maybe a year to tap into demand from lapsed Wii users. In spite of the enthusiasm indicated above, Kinect is not without its challenges. The biggest concern for many potential buyers will be the space required in front of the TV. Our system is installed in a traditionally small English cottage, and there is just about enough space to use Kinect for the few games we have tried. Demonstrations of some games I have seen suggest that Kinect owners will need clutter-free floor space of three feet by six feet (1m x 2m) at a minimum distance of six feet (2m) from the sensor in order to get the maximum benefit. Xbox actually recommends a distance of 8-10 feet (c. 3m) from the sensor. It goes without saying that this space must be free of all obstacles, alive or dead, if minor injuries are to be avoided. Other commentators have noted the potential for lag in motion sensing. The movements in the self-image window or the avatar certainly appear some fractions of a second behind actual motion. The critical question is whether this has an impact on usability, and so far, in an admittedly short series of tests, I have not noticed any significant negative impact on gameplay. There have been occasions when voice recognition and motion sensing do not appear to function perfectly, but I would not draw any conclusions regarding weaknesses in the technology versus the need for familiarisation. Only time will tell whether these are persistent issues which need to be resolved by further technology enhancements. Kinect’s success will hinge on whether “really clever stuff” is good enough to drive sales, and whether its integration into games is perceived as ground-breaking. Xbox is also taking a risk in focusing Kinect purely on the “active gaming” sector. Nintendo did break new ground with motion control, but Wii games did not always require players to stand up or indeed move around. Microsoft says that developers can deploy Kinect in more “subtle” ways, supporting sit-back gaming. Until such games appear the first titles risk being positioned as a niche market. But overall Kinect is an impressive attempt to take the TV games console industry in a new direction and we believe it will have the initial positive impact on the 360 business which we predicted earlier this year. Judgment on its longer term success will have to wait a few more months once the novelty has begun to wear off, but it would be very surprising if Kinect’s arrival does not push development of games and other TV-based applications in directions we can today only barely imagine. Client Reading: Taming the Waves: Games Console Life Cycles and Platform Competition

I never thought I would hear it, but the buzz on the streets of Essex, that trend-setting county just east of London, is that Research in Motion (RIM)’s BlackBerry handsets have now replaced Apple’s iPhone as the gadget of choice. I should immediately qualify this “finding” as purely anecdotal research, based on a conversation with my 13-year-old niece this past weekend regarding her latest phone, acquired because, as all parents will recognise, “all her friends have got one”. It doesn’t seem five minutes since she was demanding the latest iPhone, hence my surprise that the BlackBerry has risen so rapidly in the teenage desirability league table, at the expense of the apparently unstoppable iPhone. My colleague, Andy Brown, our resident RIM expert, assures me that the Canadian company has been promoting the BlackBerry as a consumer device for some years, largely by advertising it in the hands of celebrities. In spite of those efforts I would argue that it is still commonly perceived as a business-centric device. Nevertheless, consumer sales of BlackBerrys have been rising rapidly, contributing to RIM’s impressive overall performance in the mobile phone market. I was obviously keen to learn why today’s younger teenagers are apparently bucking the accepted trend towards using touchscreen, button-free devices. The QWERTY keyboard, according to my niece, is in fact one of the appealing features of the BlackBerry, since typing messages is so much easier. And it turns out that messaging appears to lie at the heart of RIM’s success in this segment: the ability for young friends to send each other messages using RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, completely free of charge, has huge appeal to the device’s owners as well as their parents, concerned at rising monthly bills. So the obvious question is, what happened to the apparently eternal appeal of an unlimited choice of apps, as well as 4” touchscreen displays? At least for this small sample, it seems they are now considered of secondary importance. For my niece and her group of friends, the ability to stay in touch via near-constant, rapid messaging, and at zero additional cost, is what matters most. Whether that will be the case as they get older remains to be seen, but it’s a reminder that one device format is unlikely to suit the needs of all segments, however successful a particular product may appear. “With iPhone, every handset works the same,” said Apple’s Steve Jobs during yesterday’s results call. Yes, Steve, they do: and it seems, amazingly enough, that some people really don’t need it that way. Client Reading: RIM Announces PlayBook Tablet and Multiplatform Strategy

I was speaking on the panel at the OTT 'mashup' eventat Ogilvy's London Docklands headquarters last night, alongside Turner Broadcasting's Casey Harwood and Anthony Rose, CTO at the BBC's Canvas (now YouView) project, amongst others. As a first-time masher-up and intrigued at the possibilities for the format, the event turned out to be organised along relatively familiar panel debate lines. Casey and I began with introductory comments, and were followed by critiques from the other contributors. The session was then opened up to debate, including audience questions. All the time, running on a display behind us, was a Twitter feed of comments from participants in the twittersphere, as well, presumably, as a few of the 100 or so people who joined us in the traditional, physical fashion. The only problem was that the panelists had to turn away from the audience to see if any particularly fascinating Tweets had appeared, and if they ever did, it was noticeable that the physical audience's attention would be diverted to the ominous gap between the panelists and away from the speakers. The one recommendation I would make is that questions and comments from the virtual audience could have been added to the debate; it did rather feel at times as though we were being Tweeted at without right of reply. Nevertheless it was an interesting evening and I hope the audience found the debate valuable. my own contribution centered on a few relevant datapoints from our recent survey of UK TV and online TV viewers. In particular I referenced the fact that 13% of UK people are currently watching TV on the internet at least on a weekly basis. So we needed to bear in mind that the OTT phenomenon is still restricted to a relatively small proportion of the population, and most of that activity is taking place on the PC. The number of people accessing web TV on their TV set is of course even smaller: 6% of people are connecting a PC to a TV, and 4% now claim to use a dedicated internet TV device. Having said that, our work with early connected TV adopters within our Digital Home Observatory suggests that television behaviour can change rapidly once viewers have access to some of these emerging technologies. This segment is motivated by a desire for greater viewing flexibility and access to preferred content. They also still see weaknesses in current connected TV solutions, especially in the field of control devices and interfaces. The panel also touched on the issue of business models, and in response to the question of how things might look in three years I replied that the basic alternatives would not change greatly: television in the UK will still be funded by a combination of public service licence fees, advertising and customer payment of one sort or another. The mix may change slightly, and we may see greater variety in pay business models. But it’s important to remember that customers are very sensitive to their monthly bills. The impression is often given, especially by new entrants, that new payment models can somehow overcome consumer resistance to the size of the overall television bill. The reality is that 80% of UK customers check their bank statements every month, and a similar proportion prefer predictability in their monthly payments. 69% would agree to pay only for the shows they watch, but only if it reduced the overall monthly bill. All in all I agreed with Anthony Rose’s comment that too little emphasis in connected TV discussions has been put on live, scheduled television. The assumption seems to be that this traditional model will break down rapidly as various on-demand options become available, but this trend is likely to happen only slowly over a long period of time. Even for early adopters, scheduled broadcasting remains an important part of the overall mix. The overall message is one of increased fragmentation of delivery models and audiences. Client Reading: Profiling the Connected Media Consumer - UK

A quick heads-up that we are offering a complimentary analyst breakfast at this year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 13th. With our partners from D. I. S. Consulting we’ll be examining the outlook for the professional and broadcast industry, which has been badly hit by the recession over the past 18 months. We’ll also be presenting new research from our Digital Home Observatory to illustrate how the viewing habits of the next generation of digital consumers are evolving as a result of the proliferation of connected TV devices. Pre-registration is advised by visiting here: Event details are as follows: Breakfast Presentation from Strategy Analytics and D.I.S. Consulting: “Broadcasting in Turmoil: Recession, Recovery and Online Disruption” Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 Time: 7:30 am - Breakfast and Registration 8:00 am - Presentation Location: Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas; Room S225 South Hall Upper Level David Mercer

We’ve covered Hillcrest Labs many times, such as here. Today the company introduced its latest offer, a web browser. At first sight it may seem like a new browser is the last thing the market needs, but this one has a key difference: it’s not designed to be used on the PC screen. It’s aimed at that growing band of consumers who connect their PCs to a TV so they can surf and watch web video from the comfort of their couch or armchair. Some browsers can be set for TV display but these options are often unsatisfactory. Hillcrest’s Kylo browser is offered free of charge. From the early demonstration we saw the company seems to have done a good job of presenting web pages more appropriately for the big screen and video consumption. As our Digital Home Observatory research has shown that connected TV viewers see the control device as a key impediment to a satisfactory experience. Using a standard PC keyboard and mouse on the couch is inconvenient at best. Onscreen keyboards can be offered for entering URLs but these are often slow and cumbersome compared to the real thing. As we’ve noted before Hillcrest’s Loop pointer deploys an impressive combination of technologies to make pointing at a screen more accurate than other motion controllers. Hillcrest’s business model is not changing as a result of the Kylo launch. While it is packaging certain web video services, it is not currently seeking to turn this into a revenue stream, although the company will watch for opportunities. Hillcrest’s primary aim and business model focus is to increase sales of its control devices. David Mercer Client Reading: Touchscreen Controllers Set to Drive the Connected TV Experience