A short news update before we head into the long US Labor Day weekend:
- The documentary Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine opens in a limited run and online
- A Fresno State student was uninjured after an armed robber shot him… and hit his iPhone
- A new Apple Store is set to open in Brussels, Belgium on September 19
- No AWT News Update on Monday
Text version is below. Today’s video can be viewed here.
With another large screen iPhone in the offing, subscribers are coming to expect seamless quality in the delivery of content and in particular video. In both countries almost one-third of subscribers (31%) expressed a strong view that video buffering is simply unacceptable. (In broadcasting, over-the-top content refers to delivery of audio, video, and other media over the Internet without the involvement of a multiple-system operator in the control or distribution of the content.)
The growing importance of Snapchat, Vine and Instagram to a younger audience was also confirmed in the survey with millennials predictably unwilling to wait for short-form video content to load. For their parents, the Baby Boomer generation, it was the reverse. Long form video was more important to them as they catch up on the previous night’s television or an episode of their favorite series on their iPhone, and this, older generation also exercised more patience.
A similar figure in both the US and UK, 39%, said they would pay extra dollars if the operator could only provide some assurance on the quality of video delivery. Most telling of all, according to Openwave Mobility, when it came to the blame game the study found that one in two customers blame the carrier for poor mobile video service and one in three blame Apple. Notably almost nobody blames the content providers or the over-the-top (OTT) players.
“With 39% of US and UK iPhone customers happy to pay more for a better mobile video experience, operators are leaving money on the table,” says John Giere, president and CEO of Openwave Mobility, which “empowers” mobile operators to manage and monetize video traffic. “Put simply, the operators working in conjunction with the industry need to improve the mobile video experience, or they will watch customers churn to competitors.”
