According to a report released by Insight Research, streaming video and music seen and heard through the Internet and mobile gadgets will reach $27 billion in revenue by the year 2011. And this is what Insight president Robert Rosenberg calls a conservative forecast.
The realization of this prediction relies on the 32% annual compound growth for the streaming media market, as well as on the attitudes consumers take towards mobile devices. Many consumers still see their mobile devices as just phones, even when they may have the capability of accessing streaming media at their fingertips.
Insight Research’s report also indicated that the next level to reach, is further linking in-home entertainment technology to users’ mobile devices. The biggest hurdle to achieving this is the low bandwidth that content providers have to work with. Currently, mobile devices are only able to connect to the Internet at approximately 10 KB per second.
There are mobile content developers such as Action Engine and mPortal that are finding ways to work around this hindrance by utilizing the increased processing power that mobile devices now possess, as well as caching applications on the actual devices. Caching allows mobile devices to use all of the available bandwidth solely for streaming video and audio, as well as other content.
Traditional Internet streaming media has already seen a spark in growth this year, as sites such as YouTube and OfficePirates have compelled media analysts to call the workday the “new primetime.”
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, CBSportsline.com had a record-breaking audience for its videos related to March Madness, and Major League Baseball had an impressive audience for its opening day offerings at MLB.tv.
Last year Apple partnered with ABC to make on-demand television shows available to users of the iTunes Music Store, causing other networks to follow suit.
Source:
http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3601271
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