LAS VEGAS – What devices are going to drive the near term future of consumer electronics and the consumption of media? The PC, smart phone, tablet and one that can actually drive, the car.
These four base devices, CNET editor Brian Cooley told the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention during a Wednesday Super Session, will be supported by operating systems such as Android, Apple’s iOS, BlackBerry’s OS, web OS and Windows 7/8. Those operating systems will then deliver myriad services to the devices, from iTunes, various BlackBerry services, Xbox Live, and other media consuming vehicles.
(His presentation summarized the key products and trends identified from January’s Consumer Electronics Show.)
And as all these things sort themselves out among consumers struggling to figure out whether they should get an iPad or a Xoom, Samsung Android phone or a BlackBerry, or a Ford with Sync, a Chevrolet featuring MyLink, or an Entune equipped Toyota, it will be “a complicated mess you in the media are going to have to figure out over the next few years,” Cooley warned broadcasters.
The new tablets, phones and in-car options, to go along with the developments in the (slowing) PC space “are rewriting the rules of watching,” explained Cooley. And that doesn’t even begin to gauge the impact on radio listenership when drivers can stream Internet radio to their new vehicles (which, by the way, will also automatically download their owners’ content library from their homes or the cloud while parked in the driveway) or when the in-car listener is the focus of targeted ads, even smart ads delivered to them (thanks to the built-in GPS technology) right when they are pulling up to the mall.
Cooley called cars the “one last major frontier of users,” adding serving media to vehicles (in a safe way), “adds millions of new user places.”
Toyota’s Entune, for example, can present data on restaurants, maps, movie tickets, music and the like in a large, easy-to-read type that drivers can glance at and not have to dangerously study like they would if they tried to read directions on their iPhones. It also features specialized Facebook and Twitter integration.
Back in the home though, connected TVs, not 3DTVs (“You can’t multi-task with those glasses on,” noted Cooley) will push future media consumption by users in their homes. Cooley said he considered a connected TV one with no computer and no browser, like one tied into a Roku box, for example, or a truly web-integrated TV.
And when it comes to tablets, he says companies have to consider them as TV sets, when they are being used as TVs, and added the legal battle between U.S. cable and content owners will be a neat fight to watch (Time Warner is offering an iPad app to customers to watch linear TV on the devices. Viacom is suing). Content owners, however, want to be paid an additional rights fee when the MSOs make content available on a tablet – especially linear content. Cablecos say the tablets are just another TV, Wi-Fi delivery just another wire.
Finally, Cooley identified a troubling trend where surveys show that consumers trust social networks for referrals or news, far, far more than they trust television, by about 10 times (although, when you think about it, most of us trust our friends more for advice on anything). The saving grace there, he noted, is most of the linking done in Facebook, Twitter and bloggers, is to large, traditional media sources.
In the end, Cooley sees a future where we end up “divorcing TV from TV,” where the big screen 10-foot lean back experience fades away and instead, viewing will be on personal screens, experiences shared virtually from whatever devices viewers are in our hands.
