Look at the incredible growth of Netflix over the last year!  9Million new subs… ( Approx 40% of their total subscribers).  They have embraced cross-platform convergence as a core strategy. Not only are they on every mobile platform that will port them today, they exist on as many platforms they can port to.  Try Nintendo, Try Playstations, X-boxes you name it Netflix is there… They started out as a humble service provider that leveraged snail-mail and now they are the top of the  rich-media content delivery business.

Media companies today need to really embrace cross-screening ( a term I created to describe the phenomena of users experiencing content on Multi-Screens.

Another company that has done a great job at the cross-screen strategy is New York Times.   Not only they marketing everywhere that they are leveraging all screens for users to consume content ( pay once and get all, they are advertising this just as well).  I see their Digital Subscriber Ads in the New York Subway everyday, and here is an ad that I recently saw in the CBSlocal.com website.

Not only is NewYork Times building themselves very strongly across all mediums, what is equally important is how much emphasis they put on Mobile.  Just recently, New York Times was awarded the 2011 Webby for the Best Mobile News Website . In today’s landscape media companies need to not only embrace mobile, but make it a very strong priority like Netflix and NYTimes.

If we look at Comcast, they do have a strong mobile strategy but as media consumption patterns are changing it is critical they embrace all platforms.   My gut tells me that they should just buy Hulu and start to change the game with Online content distribution streaming in a bigger way as well.  Put Hulu a bit out of their misery by trying to do it alone with those tough Networks.   Netflix has evolved with those relationships that started with physical plastic boxes with Tape, then DVD’s (some may say this could be considered an advantage), but they got the business model right and have expanded like crazy.   Hulu on the other hand, has had an uphill battle from the start with the content providers.  My recommendation for Comcast is to buy Hulu and start to change the game a bit with Netflix!  Make it cross-screen for all Digital Subscribers…

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TV and Mobile Universe's collide [ Nielsen Media Universe

Nielsen’s published this great diagram that compares the TV universe and mobile.  Although these are treated separately, I believe we are in for an exciting evolution of the convergence of TV and Mobile.  This year at CES many of the large consumer TV manufactures have embraced internet TV as the next big wave with their own “Cloud” based frameworks for managing and distributing content.

This diagram shows the different sizes and breakdowns of the market in North America.  It is clear the Google TV and Android coming together is a “strategy” many of the players of the ecosystem need to reckon with moving forward.

Recently, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Vizio, Toshiba, and LG have all show cased their own unique platforms for interactive TV.  It appears like the big winners that are providing services cross many of these platforms,  NetFlix, Huluplus as well as YouTube ( Google) are all leveraging this new channel to bring interactive content to the large screen.  They also have solutions and apps for the little screen, and this next step of a remote that is in the form of an application is something that will be big in 2011.

Here is an ad from LG’s new offers as well.  They have a great dynamic website that showcases this new interactive TV.  They actually have a separate “remote controller” in this demo, but in my mind it is just months away before we see this completely integrated as well into an application controlling the screen.

We have entered 2011 and I have to say the first decade did fly by rather quickly for us in the mobile industry.   I am a big fan of JWT and their things to watch deck.  I thought I would share it and highlight the top 10 in my mind for those realigning and creating a  mobile strategy this year.

This is something that caught my eye.  With all the talk of 4G, LTE and the present constant search for bandwidth, are consumers in for another cost hit moving forward? Yes- we can always go to Wifi mode when it is convenient, but still the costs of tethering with mobile devices jumps significantly when we get to the 2Gigs and above.  Mobile Video has been the high-light of many discussions as the next wave of killer content delivered to mobile and at a recent event in NYC on the future of Television all of the mobile panelists have said that mobile video is here and 2010 is really the year of mobile!

However,  according to Dr. Reinaldo Valenzuela ( in a RRW article)  director of wireless research at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, the problem is part of what he called the “too-much-data paradox”. Dr. Valenzuela spoke on the topic last week as well at the Texas Wireless Summit, describing a situation wherein the constant push for smartphone adoption will prove unsustainable for carriers ( 50% of users will have smartphones in North America by 2012. Imagine it will be Android version 5 and iOS6?)

“There’s a tremendous amount of relevant content on great devices at reasonably affordable rates,” explained Valenzuela, “however, networks have started crashing under this pressure. It’s no surprise that just in New York, to address the iPhone, AT&T is spending billions of dollars.”

The problem, Valenzuela pointed out, is that just 10% of all smartphone users are using the majority of data. With current smartphone adoption rates, carriers are looking at a situation where soon cost of providing the data being consumed will surpass profit. Dave Gill, the senior director of mobile media at Nielsen, also spoke at the summit and offered similar conclusions.

“You’ve got to somehow throttle the top end of the spectrum here to make money in this market,” said Gill, offering the following chart of mobile data use.

With the main threshold of 2Gigs today, where will this all go when we really start to bring more video and rich media into the mix?

I believe that the key to all of this will fall on some kind of  needed balance with more automatically enabled Wifi services in highly congested areas of NYC and the like.  As Wifi becomes a standard component in mobile devices, the ability to automatically switch between the mobile networks and the Wifi networks in a plan that is best mapped out to a users data plan seems like a logical step.

Will we move to metered pricing?  or will there be a cost increase in data across the board based on the supply and demand methodology of basic economics thus driving up the desire of Carriers to again start to charge more for data.

So even though we can say that 2010 was a significant year in mobile, in my mind until there is more liquidity of the data networks, we still have a bit longer to go before mobile at its prime is really unleashed.

Come and meet ADO at the Future of TV Event. Nov 19th 2010

In a recent Media Post article yesterday, Steve Smith gives another jab at the mobile video industry- Lets Give Mobile Video a little Push.  However, even though I am a mobile guy myself, I have been quite frustrated with the lack of true delivered content online.  Well, I have looked at the $8.99/month on Netflix and I am avidly scouring to find good movies to watch on Hulu, but the world of mainstream movie media going online has yet to begin.  What will it take for this revolution to begin?  We saw the problems that surfaced in the TV industry between National and Syndicated TV over the major upheaval between Conan and Leno, but with broadband now so prevalent, and some shut-down of services such as Limewire and now the debate over Bittorrent, It makes you really wonder why the MPAA and other organizations are not taking this “horse by the reins” and moving forward with a better model for more distributed cross-channel media in the 21st century.  As it is 2010, how much longer will we have to wait to get proper available new titles and shows to be launched multi-platform. We saw how effective cross media distribution started to work for the Olympics in Vancouver 2010, as well as the World Cup 2010.

Will we need to wait for Steve Jobs to bring all of this via the Apple storefront?  Will it become Amazon’s next mission over eBooks? …Or will it take more file-sharing to just get this Industry so antagonistic and pissed off in order to make change?

As we can see in the advertising space, Hulu is clearly leading the charge with Ads served, but I feel for myself that users would be willing to pay for a reliable convenient service, even with some advertising like Hulu.   Look at what Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon has been able to achieve with Amazon and the Kindle.  His goal is to get every book available with a 60sec search and download lead time.  They were able to get 600K titles in 33 months.  It should makes sense that we would be seeing this today for all media.  Where is this real giant to make this happen?  Google’s  Youtube just increased the upload lengths to 10minutes, but we need that one-shop-stop of 100′s of thousands if not Millions of movies…. Will Google Video and Google TV in the end be this answer for bringing this all together?  Well the alignment with the Hardware companies has in someway started to attack right in the gut of it all… Having this possibility from the get go right in the box might push users to drop those media cable payments only for more of these online subscription services?

As I have just relocated 50/50 to New York City, I have been subletting a space and do not have a TV.  It has been refreshing to be able to do everything online, but now and again I would like to kick-back and watch a new movie without having to go out and get the DVD ( or go to the theaters and pay $5 for Popcorn).   When I use Hulu, my choices are rather limited and I seem to be browsing through so much stuff from the 1990′s and older, that my interest level has dropped to zero.   Not much of a catalog for the 21st century.   Here is a snap-shop of what comes up in Action and Adventure titles in Hulu…. not that much leading edge stuff ( good, but not great as far as I know what they could do!)

So I then thought to try Netflix… for the $8.99 a month they do seem to have a bit better selection, but still they advertise with  21 leading titles, but this is really it! … Did not entice me to want to get locked into that payment scheme yet until I can feel that they are on-top of getting the best stuff, all the time.

I guess spending the $10~15 at the movie theater is the only real way to see the latest and greatest.  I beleive having a strategy that works along side the DVD releases could possibly be the way to go.  As Computer screens are getting better and better like true TV sets and TV sets are now becoming computer screens, why not have the same kind of pricing structure for starters that mimics the rental DVD business.   I know Netflix and Hulu guys are working hard at this everyday, but just making the movies available at the same price point would not only eliminate the need for me to either drive to pick up a DVD or even pay for the mail back and forth.   It would not only be convenient and add a bit more liquidity in choice that would most definitely bring more distribution and volume….. and think of how green it would be to not expend all that Gasoline.  I am not sure of the carbon footprint between a video stream and a ride to the local Movie Theater, but I would guess it is much less.  I guess the fear is still too great to digitize everything do to piracy, but is this not happening anyway. Does not take long to rip and upload a DVD that has been hacked these days. If Steve Jobs has shown everybody in the music business and the mobile application world that getting stuff out there in an easy and effective way to consume, users would be willing to pay…. We all know he is driving a low cost structure, but does it have to be so low to begin with. Get the stuff out there at the same standards and see what happens!

I feel that it is about time for not only a “little push” as Steve Smith says, but a ” big push” and gripe from consumers to bring us to the 21st century with all the content online and mobile.

Liz Gannes, published an article on NewTeeVee in 2008 decribing that by 2010 we would see 25% of all traditional TV viewers go Online to watch TV…. so is 25% not enough to kick start this revolution?   We are all waiting…. at least I am.