Telecom trends to watch in 2014

Informa Telecoms & Media
22 Jan 2014
00:00
Telcos will give up trying to be like OTT communications companies
The window of opportunity for telecom operators to develop “copycat” OTT voice and messaging services has closed. Such is the dominance of OTT service providers such as WhatsApp and Skype that it is extremely difficult for any new providers to develop similar propositions unless they offer new features and capabilities. Telefonica closed down its TuMe in 2013 and other similar operator initiatives are struggling to gain traction. Rather than building services that are designed to compete with OTT service providers, we expect to see operators developing OTT capabilities and services for their existing customers. And 2014 will be a crucial year in the future of Joyn, the OTT-like service that has been launched by a number of operators in Europe and Asia. Unless operators can demonstrate strong take-up for their services, it will be difficult to persuade device vendors that they need to include Joyn capabilities in their new models.
Telco mobile wallet initiatives will flicker but ultimately fail
This year will see a proliferation of mobile wallets in developed markets, especially Europe, and largely led by mobile operators. Most of these wallets will be prepaid and focused on NFC payments. But we predict that the year will close without any operator-wallet success stories. The operator wallets that have been launched in the West so far have yet to make an impact and in early January the UK operator Telefonica O2 announced that it was closing its mobile-wallet service because of poor take-up. Banks and payment brands such as PayPal are much more likely to gain traction with mobile wallets. The operators can only hope that there will be a role for them as enablers, charging fees to secure mobile payment transactions via SIMs.
Tablets, wearables and the cloud will make out-of-home content rights even hotter in 2014
With wearables, tablets and cloud storage dominating headlines for video consumption, the missing element has always been the rights to the quality content. Many 3-5 year rights deals finish in 2014 and new deals will include “internet” and “out-of-home” access to content. In an ideal world, these rights will be acquired by existing consumer TV services and allow seamless integration with TV and in-home viewing.
“Ephemeral media” will be offered by well-known content creators
“Ephemeral media”– i.e. content with a short shelf life, such as that spread via Snapchat – has traditionally been associated with user-generated content. But in 2014 it will be offered by some well-known content creators and distributors as a way of creating scarcity amid the firehose of new content. It will cause temporary panic among traditional content players which still hope (as with UltraViolet) that users will treat digital content in the same way we treated physical media. They won’t.

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