Report: Multi-Screen Content Consumption to Go “from Hype to Reality”

AUSTIN: According to a new report by IMS Research, 2012 is poised to be the year that multi-screen content consumption "transitions from hype to reality."

Shipments of residential data modems and gateways will reach 135 million in 2012, according to IMS, and shipments of IP-enabled consumer electronics devices will approach 2.5 billion, rising to 3.5 billion in 2015. The report points to several enablers driving this transition. One is the increasing adoption of fixed broadband connectivity into homes, as well as the proliferation of wired and wireless home networking. Other factors include the rapidly growing installed base of IP-enabled consumer electronics devices. New content distribution contracts also increasingly specifically allow for multi-screen distribution.

“While the concept of a converged multi-screen ecosystem is not new, the reality is that previous attempts to implement have provided a sub-par user experience,” said Stephen Froehlich, senior analyst at IMS Research. “However, 2012 will be the year that this all changes. Numerous vendors at this year’s CES, for instance, demonstrated products which showed real, highly complex, incredibly powerful and scalable solutions to the incredibly difficult problem of delivering a converged, multi-screen television experience.”

Anna Hunt, principal analyst at IMS Research, added, “The concept of convergence within the home is gaining momentum in terms of deployment of actual solutions and consumers’ usage of these solutions. For example, the multi-room DVR deployments enabled by the DLNA Premium Video protocol suite, demonstrate one of the first converged home media architectures where a primary server device distributes content to thin clients around the home.”

“The next step in this evolution is to use wireless technologies to seamlessly share content with mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones,” Froehlich concluded. “As this installed base of connected CE devices grows, service providers are focusing on evolving their strategies to encompass the multiple devices and screens used by consumers in the consumption of advanced broadband services."