Will a Majority of Entertainment Video Shift to Mobile?

Some $750 billion worth of global revenue will be “in play” by 2020, Ericsson now predicts, with half of all video entertainment content being consumed over the top and on demand.

Whether or not content owners and video distributors will have half the market revenues is, therefore, a key question, as is the issue of how revenues could shift between content owners, legacy distributors and new distributors.

Ericsson also believes mobile and untethered devices will play an important role, with 15 billion video-enabled devices connected to broadband IP networks, transforming the consumption experience of TV.

Mobile broadband will be essential in all regions and fundamental in emerging regions, Ericsson forecasts.

In part for that reason, Ericsson argues that ISPs and high speed access providers have a big opportunity, as bundling of content and services will remain an attractive consumer proposition.

At the same time, the separation of access and applications made possible by Internet Protocol also creates huge opportunities for new distributors and app providers who do not own access assets.

Others think over the top revenues could be an order of magnitude lower than forecast by Ericsson. Informat Telecoms and Media has projected $37 billion in global over the top video entertainment revenues by 2017, with nearly half representing advertising revenue.

Ooyala’s Global Video Index shows the share of time spent watching videos on tablets and mobile devices increased 719 percent from the fourth quarter of  2011 through the close of 2013.

In 2012, mobile or untethered video entertainment consumption grew 160 percent.

Ooyala believes the time viewers spend watching video on mobile devices will double by the end of 2015 to 37 percent of all online video viewing, and reach 50 percent by 2016. At such rates of growth, one might reasonably predict that a majority of all entertainment video watched by people in 2020 will occur on mobile or other untethered devices, not TV sets.

And even in cases where the TV is the display, the content might well be delivered over the top and on demand and simply directed to the television set.

That, in large part, explains the interest now shown in mobile video services by firms such as AT&T and Verizon. Distribution could well shift substantially to mobile delivery.