The Diffusion Group, or “TDG,” which provides market planning and research services for the digital video industry, says that the number of households with the basic infrastructure to enjoy Over-the-Top or “OTT” video services on their TV will grow from 130 million in 2009 to more than 360 million in 2014.
TDG’s report analyzes and forecasts global demand for a variety of OTT video platforms including games consoles, Blu-ray players, hybrid set-top boxes, Internet set-top boxes, media-centric PCs, and networked digital TVs.
The latest digital media analysis, “Broadband-Enabled TV: Evolution of OTT Hardware Platforms,” also notes that the number of active OTT households will grow from 40 million in 2009 to 170 million in 2014.
Even despite these facts, the research found that many OTT efforts have also been failing. Colin Dixon (
News -
Alert), managing partner at TDG attributes this failure to the dependence on proprietary single-function hardware paid for by consumers.
“In order to grow a profitable base of service users, OTT operators must either give the hardware away for little to nothing - something upstarts cannot afford to do - or leverage other Internet-enabled platforms as a conduit to the living room,” Dixon said.
“The latter approach is preferable, yet its success hinges on the rate at which these Internet-enabled platforms diffuse - a factor over which OTT providers have little control.”
Netflix and BBC are among the earlier winners who have been embedding their service software in a variety of retail video platforms, Dixon noted.
However, as normal replacement cycles unfold over the next five years, and as manufacturers accelerate their shift to embedded solutions, the number of households with at least one Internet-enabled living room video platform will grow rapidly.
In a prior
report from TDG on the OTT market, on-demand delivery of Internet video to the TV was predicted to grow from $621 million in 2009 to $2.1 billion by 2014.
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