Survey Sez: IPTV Operators Branch Out To Stay Ahead

Does it come as a surprise to anyone that IPTV has acted as the change agent in today’s video industry? Instead, what needs to be feared is its growing expertise in personalization.

A new survey from Infonetics Research starts out by noting: "Despite representing only a small portion of the total pay-TV market, IPTV services have had a significant impact on the market, forcing change across the entire ecosystem of video delivery. Although most IPTV operators continue to focus on customer acquisition by offering similar services as their competition, our latest IPTV survey confirms that IPTV services are entering their next phase as operators move beyond basic video offerings and begin providing consumers a highly personalized, highly integrated and portable on-demand viewing experience.”

Adds Teresa Mastrangelo, directing analyst for video at Infonetics, “Multi-screen viewing, interactive applications and social networking are some of the services expected to be implemented over the next year. Although telco operators have led with innovation using IP video, satellite and cable operators are quickly leveraging broadband infrastructure to offer similar services. It will be important for IPTV operators to watch the competition closely to determine the direction of this market.”

The IPTV survey also offers these takeaways:

>> By 2012, 63 percent of IPTV service providers interviewed plan to support multi-screen viewing across PCs, tablets and smartphones.
>> The two most widely deployed IPTV applications now and next year are widgets for such things as weather and traffic updates, and caller ID on the TV.
>> About half of the surveyed IPTV operators plan to offer targeted or interactive advertising by 2012.
>> IPTV operators continue to approach social networking for TV cautiously, with only 26 percent offering it now, with the preferences being Facebook and Twitter. That number will grow to 41 percent by 2012.