January 31, 2013

What You Need To Know Now...

When Will OTT Be King?
Small to medium-sized operators could opt for OTT delivery alone five to 10 years down the road, according to a new report from U.K.-based IHS Screen Digest. “For large consumption channels – i.e., channels with large audiences – the economics of OTT streaming remain highly unfavorable, with the cost in some cases hundreds of times greater than broadcast on satellite,” comments HIS analyst Guy Bisson. “However, for channels with a low to medium viewing share, scaling for OTT may not be such an issue.” What’s needed, IHS adds, is a consumer-facing OTT platform with enough reach to bring unicast costs down. There also must be a significant shift in consumer behavior away from linear TV to OTT.
 
Goodbye RIM, Hello BlackBerry
You always called it a BlackBerry (or CrackBerry, for those addicted to the service), and now parent company Research In Motion has acquiesced, changing the name of the company to reflect the iconic wireless device. As of next Monday, BlackBerry will start trading as “BB” on the Toronto Stock Exchange and “BBRY” on the NASDAQ. The former RIM announced its moniker change at the same time it launched its new BlackBerry 10 mobile computing platform that has been causing quite a global stir. Many analysts believe there’s no way BlackBerry 10 will be able to catch up to Apple and Google any time soon, but there is hope the Canadian concern, which did, after all, produce the top-ranked business email device for years, will work harder to compete against other smartphones on looks, functionality and apps.