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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| It’s become an annual ritual, the release of Mary Meeker’s massive Internet Trends report. As data-dumps go, it’s always a bit of an overwhelming one; this year, it runs to 355 slides. Of particular interest are the special section on China (where mobile Internet consumption has surpassed time spent watching TV), as well as her focus on India (where Internet users grew by 28% in the first half of 2016, still only representing 27% penetration). As Meeker points out, the report is intended to be read, not presented, but you can watch her presentation online if you’ve got a spare half-hour. And even though it will probably take much longer than that to get through the whole deck, it’s well worth the effort.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| European officials are being criticized from all sides, for different aspects of pending copyright proposals. Film producers at Cannes warned against going too far in implementing the Digital Single Market. “The territoriality of copyright needs to be maintained,” they said. “This principle ensures high level support for artistic creation in Europe.” They also said “Internet Giants” have to be the object of “equal application of the rules to all broadcasters, platforms, sharing websites and social networks.” The European Commission took a concrete step in that direction, advancing a proposal to more closely regulate SVOD services, including a requirement that 30% of their libraries must be European content. The Internet Giants’ surrogates took the field, too, with the usual California crowd (EFF, Wikimedia, Creative Commons) inveighing against rules that would (horrors) actually require internet companies to take steps to avoid use of their services for piracy. On that issue, a case in point arose: Google Video is now reported to be out of control, with piracy syndicates “delighted about how things are going because even if it is illegal, Google is offering a very reliable and superior hosting platform to many alternatives used to date.” There are large piracy websites in Europe which now provide exclusively links to content on Google services. I wonder who’s selling the ads…….
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Minority shareholders in Hong Kong pay TV broadcaster i-Cable Communications have voted to approve a rescue plan that will inject fresh cash into the struggling operator following the withdrawal of support by its majority shareholder, Wharf Holdings. i-Cable launched in 1993 as Hong Kong’s first pay TV operator but has seen declining subscriber numbers over the past several years. After the shareholder approval i-Cable reapplied for its pay TV broadcast license and is continuing with its roll out of the FTA service Fantastic TV. Industry experts are urging the company to rebrand and focus on OTT video services and expand its operations to outside of Hong Kong.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| In The Road to À La Carte Television, the line that jumps out is, “Here’s a hard truth about the TV industry, one that will inevitably lead us to à la carte TV: You can’t make consumers pay for channels they don’t want anymore.” Which led me to think about how important recommendation engines are moving forward. I read someplace that an average subscriber only sees 20% of Netflix’s catalogue. At first I thought this was a bit nutty, but after using the service for a while, all I now see is programming that suits my tastes. And hence, in my head anyways, I’m not paying for programming that I don’t want.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| In South Korea monthly mobile data consumption among subscribers using the LTE (4G) network has surpassed 6 gigabytes for the first time. According to the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, local smartphone users subscribing to LTE services used an average of 6.06 GB of data in April, up 2.2 percent month-on-month. Industry watchers said the increase is attributable to the rising number of users enjoying various services provided through mobile platforms, including video-streaming content. The latest monthly figures marks a sharp rise from 1.79 GB posted in 2012, which was only a year after South Korea first adopted the LTE network.
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Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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| The Media Consumption Forecasts report indicates that people will spend an average of 316 minutes per day with traditional media this year. Broadcast TV is the largest single medium for consumption, with 170 minutes viewed per day, as compared with 140 minutes for the internet. “We expect it to remain dominant for the rest of our forecast period,” Zenith says. However, the gap between television and internet consumption is getting smaller, from 30 minutes in 2017 to seven minutes in 2019. A new analysis of insights from Nielsen’s fourth-quarter 2016 Comparable Metrics Report found that over 92% of all viewing among U.S. adults (18+) happens on the TV screen.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Singapore’s My Republic internet company is rumoured to be looking for funding to buy a stake in the mobile telco M1. My Republic first came to our attention for offering high speed internet and easy access to overseas TV content through an impressive array of VPN services which allowed subscribers to bypass incumbent broadcasters and rights holders in the Lion City. If successful it will be interesting to see what USP My Republic will use to increase market share for M1 which currently ranks third in a three horse race.
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