Despite making strong early progress, connected TV services still face a number of challenges, and there is little consensus amongst the different players on who will be the eventual winner, a report said.
An industry survey by Informa Telecoms & Media also found that over three-quarters of participants cited keeping pace with competitors as a “very important” factor in the launch of a connected TV device - leading Informa to describe connected TV as remaining “one big bandwagon.”
The next three most popular motivations for the launch of a connected TV device were to sell more devices (63%), to sell devices to new users (57%) and to earn new revenues from content sales (56%). Further down the score sheet, 44% claimed that reducing churn from another product was very important.
For service providers, gaining new users seems to be the most important first step: 75% of service provider respondents claimed that they were offering content via connected devices in order to attract new users, while 63% wanted to increase the usage of existing services. Once they are "through the door" however, service providers appear keen to grow usage, according to Informa.
There were found to be interesting variations in the types of video considered by respondents to be most important to connected TV services: 60% believed that "free premium" services (predominantly catch-up TV) are very important to the development of connected devices, while 51% believed the same to be true of subscription services such as Netflix.
À la carte rental services such as offered by Apple's iTunes store tied for third place with operator-managed VOD services such as BT Vision, at 44%. Just below that with 43% were user-generated content services such as YouTube and live pay-TV services such as Sky Go. Bottom of this list were à la carte retail services such as CinemaNow, with just 35% of respondents stating that they are very important to the development of connected devices.