Digital Innovation

Digital Media Innovation and Value Creation

by

Dave Cavander, 949-500-3465, dcavander@cox.net

Background

Players in this market space include Pipes, Portals, Content and Devices. These include Verizon, Comcast, SBC, XM, Yahoo, Google, News Corp, Time Warner, EA, Microsoft, Sony and more.

One of the best view's of digital media innovation was summarized by Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony, to the FCC in 2002:

"Sony and a few other companies are at the forefront of this transformation in which the concept of "media" is evolving from a top-down, centralized dictatorship of the networktariat to a democratic tool of the people -- characterized by interactive, on-demand, and personalized services. Our chairman, Mr. Idei, may not look like Vaclav Havel, but he's helping to lead a people's revolution just the same. . . .

This revolution is resulting in a steady stream of new services and products that allow new forms of socializing and sharing emotions."

A second top leader is this space is MTV. Van Toffler, MTV's President, recently stated (NY Times):

"What has changed, though, is the environment in which MTV exists. When the network made its debut, it was sui generis. But now a host of other entertainment options -- and whole other media, on new technological platforms -- are competing for the same young demographic. If a viewer isn't watching MTV, it's not because they're watching a different channel -- they're probably playing a video game on that TV set. "

Mr. Toffler has a plan in motion to upgrade the network for the age of digital convergence, a strategy he has been known to refer to as ''multi-platform" -- an all-out effort to deliver MTV content to every form of technology imaginable, from mobile phones to digital cable to a Web-based on-demand channel called MTV Overdrive.

"The people who tap into the rhythm of how this audience uses media, those are the ones who are going to win. Our audience is full of multitaskers. They're IM-ing and talking on the phone and doing their homework and watching TV all at the same time.''

Some of the recent market capitalization moves are stunning - News Corp purchased myspaces.com for $580 million, then bought IGN. Ebay recently bought Skype for $1 billion.

Current Action

The current action for digital music is in the Mobile space with Apple's phone. Real last week announced a similar "video streaming" deal with Cingular. Other pending MVNO's include SK-ELNK, Amp'd Mobile and ESPN Mobile. To date, Sony has not "connected" content to the PSP yet.

Other fun digital stuff includes Pandora from Savage Beast, GoFish, Blinkx and www.agentdisco.com.

The consumer's world is now different. Content is consumed on devices. Consumer's access and use many "deep" catalogs of digital content. They want their stuff, their way, when and where and how they want it. Media is pulled for consumption, not pushed.

The Digital Shelf

The Digital Shelf concept creates a set of related applications, PC, set-top, cell, car, with a common GUI