At last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas McKay, whose company sells a hybrid TV product for pay-TV operators that allows them to provide subscribers with a melding of programming that includes OTT content, told an audience during a Parks Associates panel discussion that "cord cutting is an overblown reality," with a caveat. While most cord cutters seem to actually be cord switchers, he said, flitting from operator to operator, the threat that they'll potentially defect to an OTT play like Roku is a little too real to ignore.
Connected devices made up some 25 percent of TV sales last year; Parks Associates vice president and principal analyst Kurt Scherf anticipates they'll make up three-quarters of all sales by 2015, about 350 million units.
"Content options are finally catching up to the hardware innovations, and growing libraries of on-demand movies and TV available are starting to unlock the potential of connected TV devices as multifunction online entertainment and communications platforms," Scherf said.
That growth, and the increasing numbers of connected homes create immediate opportunities for service operators. "About 10 percent of U.S. households already connect their computers to the TV, that's a mass market," he said.
With more content coming online--Scherf forecasts transactional revenue from online video will increase to $8 billion by 2015--more consumers will be looking for OTT content.
From the article, "CES shows this is the year OTT becomes a player" by Jim O'Neill
