Media World!

Where the multimedia business worlds make their green bucks?

Don't just skip it as one more lengthy posts! Do critique my analysis on the media world.

First the end customer in mind of everyone is clear – the common man. Almost all people are equipped with Television. The TV is in itself a big success which gave inroads for media world to enter the common man with so much ease. The media houses took its genesis after the invention of TV. The second best push came from Personal Computers. Big corporation rise with this like Intel, Microsoft, IBM… Next, Communication moguls invented, discovered, then reinvented and rediscovered themselves to put the mobile phone on the common man’s hand. That’s the next big success story in the media world. Then came the second wave of media houses in the name of communication service providers.

In the other side of the world, in deep forests of Silicon Valley university forests, some geeks came up with invention of media era –Internet. Internet has been readily accepted by the different people, as I would say. Emails and information burst made the internet the people friendly. As more and more people adapt to internet, now internet has become immortal and eternal entity in all people’s life.Having seen the two ends of big business empire – People with TV, PC , mobile phones and Internet- now is the time to analyze deeply the different media business models exists in the world which revolves around them.

Internet through fixed cables:
The demand for more bandwidth to access internet fuels this business model. The universities research crew suggests lot of alternatives to copper cables like fiber- to-home, which had been already laid and arguably the cheapest way to push internet to each home.Corporations like Conexant, Broadcom… make the innovative products based on DSL technology. They sell the hardware like modem to people. Companies on fiber-to-home products ?

Wireless Data access:
The mobile internet access is kind of innovative idea on its own. If you are one of people who gets daunted by computers and internet, then it is one more nightmare for you, it’s like internet tag-tailing you wherever you go. People had been offered with different ways to access internet on the go. WiMax, WiFi a.k.a Hotspots: It is the wireless counterpart to DSL. The maximum bandwidth with which you can access the data is still and will always be less than wireline modems. This business has two faces, the hardware makers and the hotspots provider for the people; this is where ISP jumps in to eat their pie. Mobile phone based internet: The mobile phone spectrum available is very less to provide broadband data access. Then researchers spent a lot of time in inventing different ways to reach the broadband data rate. The GSM people evolve with different generations viz 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G… CDMA counterparts also push more data with CDMA, CDMA 2000…With the infrastructure ready to supply the enough data access to the people, the hardware OEMs came up with different versions of computer laptops, palm tops, simputers, tablet PC, blackberry devices. We can see green bucks flowing in the each direction.

Media content providers to Internet:
The people who had tasted the conventional media entertainment with TVs, are now baffled with neo-media entertainment source –Internet. The people need for more entertainment in Internet in the form of music, videos, news… in turns fuels the broadband hardware and supply business. And we can see when more bandwidth is provided to people, the demand of more entertainment in Internet also rises which in turn fuels the media content provider businesses. The media content providers for the internet evolved in the time. YouTube is the corporate face for video streaming business model. iTunes, Napster, Windows media player, Real Player… have become the audio and other media content providers for internet.The recent (rags to riches story overnight) innovative player is video streaming is Sling Media. The content from conventional television are digitized and sent via Internet to people through streaming servers.

Media content providers to Mobile phones:
The video streaming through internet can cater to this market segment too. But it eats up the mobile spectrum, which is a big resource not to be wasted for entertainment purposes. That need gave birth to direct digital broadcast to the mobile phones. The mobile phones are becoming freakier and techie these days. The mobile TV is one more added feature to your cute handset. To receive the broadcasted signals, your phone needs a tuner and the hardware to understand the digital signal and play it on your mobile phone screen. The single chip solution for tuner and decoder has a big potential. This market is expected to mature by 2008. This business pie is estimated to be around 27 billions US$ by 2008. The revenue here is shared between the broadcasters (essentially the media houses that do conventional broadcasting and/or communication service providers) and the mobile phone makers. The software makers are also vying to share this pie. It is already a crowded market and everyone wants to jump in here. A big consolidation wave is waiting in the corner.

Satellite Media to people:
Satellite radio operators in US of A are expecting to break even in 2007. The infrastructure requires huge costs than any media providers in this case. WorldSpace is a well known player in satellite radio provider. Direct-to-Home TV broadcasts are already exists in the world. In India, Dish TV, Tata Sky… are few service providers. The DTH receivers can be used to access data from Internet. That means the internet is going to enter your drawing room through one more channel- Satellites. I am not sure any corporate aiming at this pie.

In midst of different business models evolved in the time, we had seen many flop shows too like: Internet through TV. It never picked up because of basic difference in their mode of communication. TV is essentially a broadcast receiver. But for internet, we need to do one-to-one communication, which means we need the feedback channel from the end equipment. TV in PC. People clearly want to have separate devices for entertainment and internet. Satellite mobile phones – Iridium project collapse is the biggest failure ever in communication world.

Lot of allied business thrived in the sidelines of these big bucks.
Multimedia codec supply business. More the digitization of the analog speech, audio, image and video happen and more the need for the digitization arises, these companies can survive. But there is a need for them to rise in the value chain to supply end-to-end products. Small players can compete here. Electronic devices ODMs and OEMs. Whatever be the product, these guys help are necessary to see them in store shelf. Highly competitive field, clearly ear marked as Red oceans. VLSI and ASIC design. Again these are need of the hours. Same as codecs business, small players are competing here. Of course big sharks take away a lot of revenue here. Customizable processors like DSPs are necessary to reach the market fast. Might not be the final and best solution for all problems, but it saves lot of research time.

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