Products

Looking into the future, which applications are likely to be particularly popular? Experts see applications involving content, communication and commerce as especially important. When asked to forecast the situation in 2015, over 80 percent assigned “high” or “very high” importance to broadband Internet content, such as IPTV or music on demand, and broadband Internet communication services (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5:		Applications for broadband services through 2015 (Broadband economy experts)

This would suggest that the strongest growth in broadband Internet services over the next few years is going to be in the area of entertainment content, which will become the most important broadband product sector (thus bearing out the Web adage that “content is king”). Alongside content services, the experts also see broadband communication services such as Internet telephony, instant messaging and Web 2.0 applications as an increasingly important applications category for broadband services, highlighting the current trend towards personal networking via broadband. Given the special importance of content in the broadband sector, it is worth taking a more detailed look at content products.

Content offerings are likely to become established within the next few years over the entire German broadband Internet market, opening the way to a completely new form of entertainment. But there are some requirements to be met before this can be achieved. Experts have identified a number of important prerequisites for IPTV and music on demand in particular.

They believe that the penetration of IPTV in the German market will be dependent mainly on image quality and ease of viewer access (Fig. 6). Other important factors are identified as interactivity functions and a high-quality electronic program guide. So the message for IPTV providers is clear: quality and interaction are more important than simply making all manner of content available online.

Fig. 6:		Drivers for IPTV offerings in the fixed broadband Internet market (Broadband experts)

What kinds of media services are going to develop in the future? And what impact will convergence in the telecommunications and media sectors have on this process? These are the issues addressed in the next chapter of “Deutschland Online”.