December 5, 2008 - Most TV operators (whether incumbent or just arriving) are evaluating whether or not to expand their TV offerings beyond their original endpoints. Cable operators are looking at Internet-to-PC video services, DBS operators are looking at automotive and portable video services, and online operators are looking at everything and anything in between - any way to extend the reach of their video services to a different viewing platform.
In its fullest expression, these are known as 3-screen strategies - that is, a single TV service (and a single payment) that delivers video to TVs, PCs, and mobile devices. Simply put, it is a huge competitive advantage for an operator to serve all three screens in a quantitative and qualitative fashion, especially against a one screen provider.
We Recently Asked Adult Broadband Users:
Imagine that a single TV service could be accessed on all three of your 'screens' - your home TVs, PCs, or mobile devices such as a cell phone, PDA, or video-enabled iPod. This would be a single TV service that could "serve" any of your video devices, whether at home or on the road, at just about any place or time.
Respondents were queried against a 7 point scale with "1" being "Definitely Won't" and "7" being "Definitely Would." Further, this question was averaged across random price queries ranging from $65/month to $105/month.
In an interesting turn, TDG crosstabulated responses against the type of mobile phone used by respondents. Presumption would suggest that iPhone users would be more likely to sign up for such a service (being exposed to what high-quality mobile video may look like), but the difference in strength of the response what was not as dramatic as one might think.
As illustrated, 20% of iPhone users are highly likely (answering "6" or greater) to sign up for a 3-screen service, compared with 24% of non-iPhone smartphone users, 20% of high-end handset users, and 10% of average handset users.
According to this data, non-iPhone users are about 19% more likely to sign up for a 3-screen service than iPhone users. At first this doesn't appear like much of a finding, but it runs completely counter to conventional wisdom - that is, iPhone users are leagues above the rest when it comes to interest in new video services. This does not say they are NOT interested, only that iPhone users are less interested in 3-screen services than non-iPhone smartphone users - an encouraging sign for those unable to sell iPhones to their subscribers.
ShareThis