With a record assistance once again, the prestigious Mobile World Congress 2016 has already closed this edition's doors, confirming that Media content and video will be some of the main tendencies in the telecommunications, broadcast and Media & Entertainment industries within the next years. After attending this major event, from VSN we wanted to offer a deep analysis about the most interesting tendencies shown in the Barcelona's tradeshow and review some lessons learned that could be applied to our industries in the near future. The main conclusion? We walk to a future where Media content, video, visual communication and virtual reality will play a decisive role. Mark Zuckerberg was responsible for one of the most charismatic pictures of this MWC, walking through an audience who followed Facebook's CEO conference by using Virtual Reality. Source: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook.
It was one the most long-awaited presentations of this year and without a doubt it has been one of the most inspiring conferences of this MWC 2016, specially for the Broadcast and Media & Entertainment industries. Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced while being surrounded by cameras and lenses that video in 2016 is probably as big of a shift in the way that people are going to share and consume what is going on in the world around them as mobile was for how people share in 2012 or 2011'. Moreover, Zuckerberg also predicted that we are going to be in a world few years from now where the vast majority of the content that people consume online is going to be video . A statement that, although it may seem surprising at first, agrees with the available data that every year this type of content registers in terms of growth.
Considering Cisco's estimations, on 2020 an individual person could spend almost 5 million years watching all the video content that will be available on the Internet. Furthermore, the amount of video on demand (VoD) will predictably duplicate by this year, because of the increase of portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. In fact, video will consume about a 75% of all the data traffic of these kind of devices by 2020.
Taking into account this background, it is easy to understand why the image (even more if it's moving image) became one of the main undeniable protagonists and themes of this MWC. Getty Images' CEO, Dawn Airey, stated that imagery is number one language in the world' and this idea is something in which apparently all the leading technological companies agreed when predicting the main course of innovation in the future. For example, Huawei's Deputy Chairman and rotating CEO, Guo Ping, said at his conference that after 4G, 4.5G will be the enabling technology for the digital transformation and one of its three basic characteristics will be precisely the HD voice and video experience anytime and anywhere'. This will precisely be one of the core main features of the mobile networks during the next five years, according to Ping, who also added that considering their estimations, by 2025 there will be 100 billion connections globally.
At VSN we know perfectly what these data and forecasts mean. The Broadcast and Media & Entertainment industries will need to be prepared to face one challenge: being capable of managing and working with more and more video files while inmediately sharing all of them with even more users, devices and platforms. Moreover, if the amount of video flies is expected to be four times the one we have nowadays, another main challenge will be also improving the Media Asset Management (MAM) software's efficiency and quickness, as well as optimizing the playout in order to deliver on time the most important aspect of future communications: the Media content.
VSNEXPLORER suite of solutions offers a MAM adapted to the latest tendencies of the market in order to improve work's speed, automation and efficiency.
Some MAM functionalities, such as the automatic Media cataloguing and search or the instantly publishing of content in second screens (Internet, social media, apps ) at the same time are some of the developments that matter us. At VSN we firmly believe that these innovations will shake up in a near future the way in which the Broadcast and Media industries currently work. Any company's media management will not be anymore just sharing some videos with our users. All company's communications, no matter if they are internal or external, will exclusively be based on video, transforming the whole enterprises in a kind of TV channel that offers live content and video on demand alike, anytime and anywhere.
Social, mobile and digital video have converged', explained Buzfeed's CEO, Jonah Peretti. They have created the biggest content distribution network that the world and people now are starting to see that this convergence is unlocking massive opportunities for reaching a global audience that they have never reached before'. So, is there anything else to develop yet?
Indeed. The innovations introduced at MWC 2016 go beyond all this and there are a lot of companies which already think that image and video will surround us in the next years, even allowing us to interact with them. Basically this is the challenge that Virtual Reality faces: a technology that is expected to reach 1 billion dollar income in 2016, considering Deloitte's consultancy firm estimations.
Some companies are more sceptical about VR and they even think this new tendency is going to experience a decrease of importance similar to the one that experienced 3D before. However, others firmly believe that this technology is here to stay and if not, how could be explained the amount of new VR devices launched at this MWC's edition? Oculus Rift, Samsung's Gear VR, HTC Vive or the 360 degrees
