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December Midmonth 2008
Content Insider —
Visions for 2009
A Year of Realignment, Reassessment And Repositioning
Article By Andy Marken Of
Marken Communications
We will state the obvious for the year with a twist...
not since the last
major downturn in the early 1980s have firms in the PC, CE industry had such an
opportunity to:
Slash costs, downsize the workforce, shrink to core (known) market opportunities
Revaluate product/product segment/customer ROI/opportunities; realign
product/service investments based on long-range strategic plans
Do you see the differences?
Management in the first group of firms who focus on cut and retrench will
circle the wagons to force short term results regardless of the long-range
potential of the market segments.
Industry executives are most certainly jealous of the support governments are
providing to their local financial and auto industries. The problem is it is
impossible for them to admit that they have run out of ideas that will correct
the situation!
Rough Flight: The computer, consumer
electronics, communications industries experienced some heavy turbulence as it
flew into what was going to be a solid growth year. The industries don’t know
how to beg so they are relying on their own ideas and creative approaches (yes
with a little help from business/home consumers) to repair their planes and get
back on a regular flight schedule.
Reshaped, Refocused
Personal, Family Content: Consumers are
weighing their holiday and 2009 purchases very carefully focusing on
products/services they can share/use at home. The growing volume of personalized
content continues to grow and needs to be stored. Source: Microsoft
The trend will be fed through 2009 as more public and private content is made
available. Men, women and children are producing and sharing more of their own
content at home and within their extended cocoons (communities). Now that more
robust and global broadband is available firms that will benefit are those that
can tap into these social networks and communities and from our
perspective... storage providers!
Storage Importance
Memories are an integral part of being a human being
Sharing moments and memories is key part of building relationships
Digital technologies are providing new, more economic, easier ways for people to
create, capture, share, use their content
Digital content represents a means for people to share their legacy, their
mortality with future generations
User generated content will exceed the volume of commercially generated content
by the end of the decade
Mine, All Mine
Content is rapidly becoming the
most widely used, exchanged, enjoyed data available. While commercial ventures
anguish over the loss of "their" content, they should take note that in most
systems the content stored is personally developed/shared stuff not theirs.
Photos, videos, mash-ups, mess-arounds all result in more storage usage than
that from the pros. Source: Coughlin Assoc
The average total storage in and around the home will increase to more than 2TB by the end of next year and will increase to nearly 8TB by 2012. The demand will swell for personal on-the-go storage and centralized save-it storage because people everywhere will be gathering up and sharing... content!
Friends, Family Plan: Camphones, cameras,
camcorders, webcams make it possible for folks to take more photos, video…and
they’re doing it globally. All of that content doesn’t even take into
account the 500 billion analog images (negative/slide/print) content that
hasn’t been saved to digital (and probably won’t) which will disappear from
the scene. Oh yes, let’s not forget video and audio tape content which will
fade unless you act now! Source: IDC
Audio entertainment materials will come from all of the usual
prospects/suspects.
Personal and family content will grow from photos taken with digital cameras and camphones.
Video — really bulky high-definition stuff — will grow captured with cameras,
camcorders, camphones, TV captures, Web 2.0 gotta-have grabs, rent/rip/return
discs.
Some, ok most, will never see the light of day once it is
captured/stored. But increasingly people will want to do stuff with it, modify
it, customize it, tailor it and make it his or her content. Then they’ll want
to share it.
Customization
A slight side note here because we’ll see a major increase with the
cocooning individuals and families in wanting software and solutions that will
enable them to personalize, privatize that content. The new users won’t be the usual pros, semipros, tweekers
'n twitterers.
The successful providers will be organizations — hardware, software or combo firms — that not only deliver elegant, easy-to-use, almost automatic interface/workflow solutions. Winning companies will step outside the industry’s old-fashioned comfort zone by doing more than delivering pretty-good software and Bangladesh Jim support.
They will:
Provide a continuing video how to work with, use the product series on the web
Explain how individuals can do more with their audio video content — including
how they can enhance, enrich, enjoy it with other organizations collaborative
products/services
Execute an on-going series of video on demand seminars/courses on basic and
advanced "tricks of the trade" assistance
Become increasingly involved in and support the narrow special interest
communities or families
Nurture and assist local, regional, special interest, subculture, friends/family
content groups to expand their personalized libraries of content
Before the Cloud
While CDN (content delivery network) providers proclaim that home storage,
HD, flash, optical, etc, will become almost meaningless by the end of 2009 they
tend to overlook the facts that:
Only about 50 percent of the homes in the Americas (numbers are better in the Pacific
Basin, worse in Europe) have high speed Internet connectivity
There is a major personal/family satisfaction of being able to "see" and "touch" the content in the cocooned home more so than content that is
available... on demand!
The more content people have, the more they want and usually in multiple formats.
Orderly Storage: Some household managers try
to partition their home entertainment server so that family members all have
their private area as well as shared storage. Kids in our household always seem
to be clambering for more portable and stationary storage.
This coming year it is estimated that more than 100 EB of storage — flash,
HD, optical, etc — will be shipped for CE applications.
It’s dark, gloomy outside.
Marken Communications
3375 Scott Blvd., #108
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Voice: (408) 986-0100
E-mail: Andy@MarkenCom.com
Website: www.markencom.com
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