Content offerings

Content offerings on the Internet comprise films, music and games in particular. What makes these stand out is the fact that they are “on demand”, i.e. can be called up immediately and used whenever it suits the user. In the opinion of broadband experts, Music on Demand will top the list of user preferences in future: it is forecast that around 16% of households will be using Music on Demand in 2010, rising to around 31% of households in 2015 (Figure 10).

Figure 10:		Use of different types of broadband content in households through 2015 (broadband experts)

Lower user figures are expected overall for Video on Demand .However its growth rate will be considerably higher than that for Music on Demand. It is predicted that by 2010 almost 11% of German households will be taking advantage of Video on Demand, with around a quarter of German broadband users in 2015 expected to be using the convenient option of calling up movies from the Internet at the press of a button.

Online gaming is pegged to grow more slowly. In 2010 the user share of online gaming is forecast to be just under 10%, but by 2015 around 16% of households will ostensibly be taking advantage online gaming.

Consumers have clear requirements in terms of content usage on broadband Internet. The most important reasons they gave were price and download speed (both factors being rated as important to very important by around 94% of respondents). And of course the scope of the offerings, their range and the availability of favorably priced offerings in combination with fast broadband access all play a crucial role. The opportunity to make copies of the acquired content for their own use was important or very important to just under 70% of all consumers surveyed (Figure 11).

Figure 11:		Factors in the purchase of content offerings via broadband Internet (consumers)

Consumers’ main content preferences involved education and science (with around 77% saying they were interested or very interested here), followed by local information (around 69%), PC/Internet/mobile topics (64%), politics (around 61%) and business (around 60%). Compared with the findings of other studies, music has become much more popular with consumers, with interest in this area running at around 46% — enough for seventh place (Figure 12). The interest in information on travel, financial investments, TV programs as well as sports and automotive comes half-way down with 38-46%. The lowest level of interest is in dating offerings (around 10%) and online diaries, known as blogs (around 9%). This also shows how much broadband Internet and the options it enables have already changed people’s attitudes. The fact that education and science are ranked so highly proves that the high-speed network has caught on as an important source of information for continuing education. This also clearly underlines the economic benefit of broadband networks.

Figure 12:		Consumers’ level of interest in broadband content categories (consumers)

There are different end devices available today for receiving and using broadband content, and these differ in terms of their functionality and ease of use. In this context there is the interesting question of which device will really catch on in the future. Which one will become the most important hardware platform?

In the view of the majority of experts (around 78%), this will be the TV set in combination with a set-top box (Figure 13). Arguing in favor of this scenario is the fact that television is already in virtually every German home. The television is also an established medium that people use in their free time and for entertainment purposes, and it is therefore particularly well-suited to broadband content offerings. Experts refer here to a “lean backward” medium: you can “lean back” while you use the offering. However it also implies that active interaction is not necessary while the medium is being used.

Computers on the other hand are “lean forward” media, which so far have been used primarily for work purposes. Nevertheless, all in all, around 53% of people surveyed expect high (approx. 17%) to very high usage (around 36%) of PCs and laptops for accessing broadband content. In the opinion of around 47% of experts, integrated devices with PC and TV functions will be used as end devices to a high (circa 28%) or very high extent (circa 19%). Furthermore around 52% of consumers surveyed stated that they would like to use these integrated appliances in future to a great or very great extent.

In this context a special role will be played by the multimedia mobile phone. The cell phone is not a competing end device, but a complementary one. It extends and supports the functionality of stationary devices when on the move. Around 39% of experts expect a high (circa 31%) to very high (circa 8%) rate of usage for these devices in accessing broadband content.

Figure 13:		Rate at which different end devices will be used in future for accessing broadband content (broadband experts)

In their usage of mobile end devices, consumers prefer different content than for stationary devices. Consumers’ interest in mobile content offerings is currently concentrated on the categories of “Local – commerce” (36%), news (ca. 30%) and “Local – entertainment” (24%). “Local” in this context means information related to the location — for example, shopping opportunities in the vicinity — or entertainment and leisure offerings. Dependent on their location, consumers will have the appropriate information at their disposal (Figure 14).

Currently the overall level of interest in mobile broadband content is relatively small in comparison with stationary broadband content (Figure 13). The extent to which the merging of stationary and mobile broadband Internet use will produce convergent levels of content interest remains to be seen.

Figure 14:		Consumer level of interest in mobile broadband content categories (consumers)