The Consumer Electronics Show that took place in Las Vegas in early January highlighted tablets, 3-D and Connected TV. Regarding Connected TV, several innovations came to the fore, including Cisco’s Videoscape platform. Early movers, such as boxmaker Roku (with already 1 billion streams offered), VOD provider Netflix (11 manufacturers are set to make a remote control with a dedicated Netflix button), software company Sling (deals with Verizon and Google) and Philips (with 300 apps on Philips Net TVs, and40 million users planned for 2012) reported good progress. On the chip front, innovations came from Broadcom, STM, Trident and Intel. New connected TV's were presented by LG, Toshiba and Vestel, amongst others.
But perhaps most notable were the parties that did not make the show, at least not with Connected TV. These included Microsoft, Google and Nokia Siemens Networks.
Rumours surfaced shortly before the start of CES that Microsoft would make a statement there, but nothing came out of it (see our Background Article "Microsoft will enter the Connected TV market, but only in late 2011”). Also Google, before the CES, asked hardware partners to hold back devices with pre-installed Google TV. Really, there were so many problems with content as well as with technology (see our commentary "Google TV frustrated by Hollywood”). According to fresh rumours, Google could be planning to abandon the current Intel platform, reportedly plagued by software problems, and moving to an ARM platform. Intel may have come out with an excellent set of quarterly results, but it is not doing so well on the Connected TV market: the company barely has a toehold on that market, and losing Google as a customer would be a heavy blow.
As an aside: Although Google is ahead of Yahoo! on many fronts, Yahoo! is still at this moment way ahead with its Yahoo! Connected TV. New interactive technology has been added to the platform, as well as content. Worldwide, 6 million TVs have been sold with the software. The number is expected to reach 8 million over the next two months.
A third party conspicuous for its absence at CES was Nokia Siemens Networks. The company seems to be concentrating on its own funding (it is searching for a third shareholder) and on the mobile market. IPTV is clearly not a top priority. In September, the company did announce a new platform, Ubiquity Multiscreen TV Platform, complete with demos on YouTube. But really, the platform seems to have barely left the drawing board. And that can be taken literally, because if you look closely at the YouTube videos (for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkJ2e7yE4cg; which, at the time of writing this report, was only viewed one thousand times), you can without a doubt see that there is no prototype, only an animation film showing what the user interface will look like. There is no real product prototype to be demonstrated. Hence the absence of NSN at CES. NSN’s first platform customers, Belgacom and KPN, must be viewing company developments with sad eyes. Even worse, they must be NSN’s only IPTV customers, raising the question: wouldn’t it just be simpler for NSN to throw in the towel? NSN’s handful of customers (also T-Com in Croatia and HickoryTech in the U.S.) provide a very narrow base for platform R&D. Belgacom and KPN would perhaps be better off looking for a new supplier, which in today's crowded market should be no problem.
Telecompaper is organizing on 27 April the Connected TV 2011 conference.
