LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Connected Home World Summit 2011 produced by Informa Telecoms & Media took place in London on 28th-29th June 2011. The conference was noted for covering many diverse issues including CE technology development, interoperability and standards through to content development, innovative business models and much discussion as to which side of the industry is destined to lead and dominate the future of the Connected Home.
The conference included many high level service provider speakers, standing at the forefront of making the Connected Home a reality worldwide. Ann Shaub, Director of the Connected Home at Verizon spoke about the company’s new home automation service currently being trialled. Users can add devices to the network and set them up to interact as they wish. The only stipulation was the need for these devices to use the Z-wave RF technology. Two user cases were highlighted: walking in the door and having the hallway light come on automatically and, having left the house, being able to check doors are locked and receive messages when people arrive or leave the home. She noted however, there is the potential for many more applications along these lines.
Paul Berriman, CTO from PCCW spoke about quadruple play (across broadband, fixed line, mobile and pay TV). PCCW is now offering lots of different content apps to all devices such as Yellow Pages and cinema ticket booking apps. They now produce their own content too and are launching an e-health service in next 2 months which he predicted will be extremely popular.
Tim Wright from Sony Pictures Entertainment, talked about DECE’s (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) project: UltraViolet. UltraViolet will enable purchasers of UltraViolet DVDs, music, online films etc, to download their content from their online locker onto any device wherever they are, under a single login: one username per household. He believes that people will be willing to pay that little bit more for an UltraViolet media product just to have that freedom.
In the key note session, Defining the Path to Profitability, on Day 2, Andrew Ladbrook, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media commented that Connected TVs will overtake games consoles as the highest selling connected device and that hybrid STBs will also gain in popularity. However he revealed that only 5% of all household devices are capable of being connected at the moment and this will only rise to a third of devices by 2016.
A panel comprised of HbbTV, BBC iPlayer, Google and mgMEDIA discussed the growing influence of connected home platform owners. The panel agreed that data connectivity between devices is a challenge for all platform owners and storing data in the Cloud is a much more attractive proposition than shifting content directly between devices. As well as speaking Google’s Android @ Home and Google Plus initiatives, Kevin Mathers, Head of Technology from Google also mentioned the company’s decision to withdraw e-health and energy management services, predicting that these areas are unlikely to deliver much money long-term.
Another lively panel discussion was The Future Content Landscape. The panel assessed the walled garden model versus the open ‘app store’ model. The open model was narrowly felt to be better overall as it had more flexibility and diversity (but not as much control). They also discussed how developing content suitable for all devices is incredibly hard without standardised systems and they predicted that viewing trends will change as more access routes to content through connected devices increase.
The Summit featured 21 countries in attendance, with 35% of attendees at CXO level and 40% of attendees from the Service Provider community. Please click here to view the whole post show report.
Next year’s event will be in London on 8th & 9th May 2012 where the speakers will be discussing the latest trends and best sharing practices in this fast moving industry.
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