The emerging three screens platform
By Stephen Wood
This article is the first in a six part series written by Stephen Wood, discussing the convergence of the Smart Phone, Personal Computer, and Television. Each article will discuss an event or technical capability which is forecast to emerge in the near future. These forecasts were developed for Incisor using new techniques in market analysis that provide a context against which Incisor readers could evaluate the value of innovations entering the market.
In the early 1980s, the personal computer emerged as a platform which combined the microprocessor, memory, display and I/O into a single system. This physical platform transformed the world. In the 1990s, the Internet emerged as a logical platform composed of PCs, browsers, and the telephone network. Like the PC before it, the Internet has radically changed how we conduct business and entertain ourselves. And now, another major platform is beginning to be defined. The Three Screens Platform will connect the smart phone, the personal computer and the television together into a common, collaborative system which blends the capabilities of their respective networks. Over time, it will also connect the automobile and the point of sale into the platform as well.
Just as the PC and the Internet emerged to fill needs that the mainframe and data networks could not readily satisfy, the three screens platform is emerging to address needs which have proven to be challenging for the PC, mobile phone and television to satisfy independently. As an example, consider the PC’s track record on ease of use and reliability. Do you ever encounter the “blue screen of death” on your television? Does your refrigerator ever get a virus? How long does your microwave take to boot up? Maybe you have to pay for food repeatedly when you move it from the freezer to the oven. These problems with the PC have been well known for several decades but remain unresolved.
In addition to solving these long term problems, the emergence of the three screens platform will expand the scope of applications that can be addressed. Imagine being able to select music and video to take with you on a vacation trip. This content is quickly downloaded to your smart phone. From there, the content is uploaded into your car. The music becomes part of virtual radio stations that can be selected by pressing radio buttons. Unlike the radio, songs that grate can be skipped. There are also no dead zones to fall into. If you run out of content while on your trip, more can be purchased from kiosks at gas stations, rest stops and stores along the way. The functionality added by the three screens platform will allow for the smooth movement of content between various devices and across various networks with minimum of user intervention.
To do this task, new capability will need to be added to each of the component platforms to allow them to interact in the common system. Here is a description of some of the missing pieces.
Trust - A chain of trust needs to be established from the hardware up through each of the software elements. Trust is required to conduct e-commerce transactions and to suppress malware.
Identification – A combination of hardware and software must be able to identify the user at the user’s request in a verifiable manner. This capability enables reliable access control, improved financial transaction authorization and membership.
Management – The overhead of managing the devices and the network needs to be passed to network administrators to offload work from the consumer and to increase the reliability of the network. The end nodes in the devices must be able to respond to management requests.
Data Shuttle Protocols – Many transactions that will occur should not require the direct input of the user. This includes data exchanges for personalization data collection and context monitoring. A uniform process for making these authorized, but independent exchanges needs to exist.
Composability Protocols – Devices need to be able to share capability to create an optimum user experience. For instance, a smartphone user may wish to temporarily connect to and drive a keyboard and monitor in order to create a short Powerpoint document. Composability protocols allow authorized and available resources to be identified and recruited.
Traffic Scaling – Transferring a HD video stream for viewing on a smart phone consumes both time and power. Methods must be created by which the content transferred can be well matched to the intended user experience.
Personalization / Context Awareness/ Privacy – The options available to the user at any given moment could become overwhelming, requiring almost continuous user input and an unacceptably high level of knowledge on the part of the user. To avoid this, the system must be able to collect data about “normal” use patterns in order to infer how the user intends to use the device. When data is collected, the aggregators must abide by existing laws governing privacy. Where laws do not exist, the privacy policies should still guarantee consumers a responsible degree of protection.
The elements required for this platform were not randomly chosen. To get this list, it was first necessary to assemble the applications which were to be enabled by the new platform. Each of these applications was then broken down into the functional blocks that would be needed to run it. And finally, when the list of functional blocks was aggregated, those which were needed across a significant percentage of applications were considered to be part of the platform. Those listed in a small percentage of applications are treated as options. To get a feel for some of the applications that were used, consider personalization as an application.
Know me, show me …
Personalization is a hot category of late. This technique involves collecting information about a user’s consumption patterns and using that to suggest future consumption. Amazon uses it to recommend books. Google uses it to place banner ads that are related to the search being performed. Tivo uses it to recommend and acquire other television programs that you may wish to watch. Taken to a more extensive level than is being done today, one would collect consumption information from any available point of consumption and use that to perform more exhaustive analysis. This would include gaming use, energy consumption, e-commerce purchases, video traffic patterns, voice call use, etc. Obviously, given the potentially intrusive nature of this development, one would also like to see a strong privacy policy simultaneously introduced.
Personalization of this type requires data collection that performs to agreed levels of accuracy. It requires methods by which to transfer data to an aggregation point where profiles can be drawn. It needs to make sure that the data cannot be spoofed or corrupted. Advertisers will depend upon this data to set rates and to monitor ad effectiveness. Likewise, the data being transferred needs to be secure to avoid eavesdropping which might potentially allow an unauthorized party to violate user privacy. All of these requirements and more were fed into the platform definition.
Shifting sands
Just as the technical markets and the business world evolved in response to the introduction of the PC and the Internet, the introduction of the three screens platform can also be expected to generate a lot of change. Some of the changes will be in the form of new applications while others will be in the form of major changes to existing platforms and market ecosystems.
As an example, consider the relationship between the smart phone and the PC. Over the last forty years, the PC has evolved through the desktop and the notebook and is now moving into the handheld generation. The handheld generation of the PC is the smart phone. This step causes telephony and computing to converge. The emergence of the three screens platform will enable the smart phone generation to work with the desktop and the notebook generations more completely.
Recognize that the smart phone has certain limitations in terms of its user interface, its battery size and its memory capacity which make it ideal for mobile applications, but deficient for work which stresses these functional blocks. For instance, it would be inconvenient to create a detailed Powerpoint presentation on a smart phone due to the limitations of the user interface. To compensate for this, the three screens platform functionality needs to allow the smart phone to temporarily exploit the functionality of a desktop or notebook (through docking) to expand the user interface while it is needed and while the user is stationary and then to conveniently disconnect and allow the smart phone to become mobile again when the work is done.
Operator challenges
As an example of a significant change in the ecosystem due to the three screens platform, consider events from the perspective of a quad play network operator. It benefits the network operator to connect the networks that they have together as tightly as possible. For instance, a wireless mobile operator wishing to create a video service can only deliver video via an expensive WAN link. By contrast, an operator that has wired video operations as well as wireless mobile operations has the option of creating a video service where video is delivered to a set top box and then transferred to the mobile device via a LAN or PAN link. They have access to more bandwidth and more cost effective delivery to make a business. By connecting the networks closely, customer churn is reduced and profitability can be optimized.
Additionally, a quad play network operator will be in a position to collect more consumption information to use for personalization of advertising. Instead of being limited to just telephony data, a quad play operator will be able to draw upon television traffic, Internet traffic, telephony, any connections which the mobile phone might eventually make (i.e. e-commerce, gaming, applications, location). When this data is combined, it enables much more precise profiling of a consumer and therefore makes a much more attractive solution for advertisers looking to deliver messages to a target audience. This enables the network operator to charge more for its superior targeting ability.
The quad play operator benefits from the three screens platform and is in a position to encourage and direct its evolution. This will tend to move the quad play operator into a control position in the computing ecosystem in a similar manner to the way that they own a control position in the mobile telephony and television ecosystems. The emergence and full development of the three screens platform and ecosystem will take several years to occur, but the speed with which it emerges will accelerate as manufacturers become aware of the market’s .
Additional information about the three screens platform and other upcoming market events can be found at www.mappingthewhitespaces.com.
Stephen Wood has spent the last eight years developing a series of behavioral models which explain the behavior of high tech markets and which provide insights about upcoming events. These models provide the basis for the projections described in this series. Additionally, Stephen has spent the last twenty years doing market analysis and product management in PAN, WAN and LAN technologies. Most recently, he held the role of President for the WiMedia Alliance in UWB personal area networking. Stephen’s website at www.mappingthewhitespaces.com discusses his models and forecast. He can be contacted at wood.stephen@verizon.net
This article is the first in a six part series written by Stephen Wood, discussing the convergence of the Smart Phone, Personal Computer, and Television. Each article will discuss an event or technical capability which is forecast to emerge in the near future. These forecasts were developed for Incisor using new techniques in market analysis that provide a context against which Incisor readers could evaluate the value of innovations entering the market.
In the early 1980s, the personal computer emerged as a platform which combined the microprocessor, memory, display and I/O into a single system. This physical platform transformed the world. In the 1990s, the Internet emerged as a logical platform composed of PCs, browsers, and the telephone network. Like the PC before it, the Internet has radically changed how we conduct business and entertain ourselves. And now, another major platform is beginning to be defined. The Three Screens Platform will connect the smart phone, the personal computer and the television together into a common, collaborative system which blends the capabilities of their respective networks. Over time, it will also connect the automobile and the point of sale into the platform as well.
Just as the PC and the Internet emerged to fill needs that the mainframe and data networks could not readily satisfy, the three screens platform is emerging to address needs which have proven to be challenging for the PC, mobile phone and television to satisfy independently. As an example, consider the PC’s track record on ease of use and reliability. Do you ever encounter the “blue screen of death” on your television? Does your refrigerator ever get a virus? How long does your microwave take to boot up? Maybe you have to pay for food repeatedly when you move it from the freezer to the oven. These problems with the PC have been well known for several decades but remain unresolved.
In addition to solving these long term problems, the emergence of the three screens platform will expand the scope of applications that can be addressed. Imagine being able to select music and video to take with you on a vacation trip. This content is quickly downloaded to your smart phone. From there, the content is uploaded into your car. The music becomes part of virtual radio stations that can be selected by pressing radio buttons. Unlike the radio, songs that grate can be skipped. There are also no dead zones to fall into. If you run out of content while on your trip, more can be purchased from kiosks at gas stations, rest stops and stores along the way. The functionality added by the three screens platform will allow for the smooth movement of content between various devices and across various networks with minimum of user intervention.
To do this task, new capability will need to be added to each of the component platforms to allow them to interact in the common system. Here is a description of some of the missing pieces.
Trust - A chain of trust needs to be established from the hardware up through each of the software elements. Trust is required to conduct e-commerce transactions and to suppress malware.
Identification – A combination of hardware and software must be able to identify the user at the user’s request in a verifiable manner. This capability enables reliable access control, improved financial transaction authorization and membership.
Management – The overhead of managing the devices and the network needs to be passed to network administrators to offload work from the consumer and to increase the reliability of the network. The end nodes in the devices must be able to respond to management requests.
Data Shuttle Protocols – Many transactions that will occur should not require the direct input of the user. This includes data exchanges for personalization data collection and context monitoring. A uniform process for making these authorized, but independent exchanges needs to exist.
Composability Protocols – Devices need to be able to share capability to create an optimum user experience. For instance, a smartphone user may wish to temporarily connect to and drive a keyboard and monitor in order to create a short Powerpoint document. Composability protocols allow authorized and available resources to be identified and recruited.
Traffic Scaling – Transferring a HD video stream for viewing on a smart phone consumes both time and power. Methods must be created by which the content transferred can be well matched to the intended user experience.
Personalization / Context Awareness/ Privacy – The options available to the user at any given moment could become overwhelming, requiring almost continuous user input and an unacceptably high level of knowledge on the part of the user. To avoid this, the system must be able to collect data about “normal” use patterns in order to infer how the user intends to use the device. When data is collected, the aggregators must abide by existing laws governing privacy. Where laws do not exist, the privacy policies should still guarantee consumers a responsible degree of protection.
The elements required for this platform were not randomly chosen. To get this list, it was first necessary to assemble the applications which were to be enabled by the new platform. Each of these applications was then broken down into the functional blocks that would be needed to run it. And finally, when the list of functional blocks was aggregated, those which were needed across a significant percentage of applications were considered to be part of the platform. Those listed in a small percentage of applications are treated as options. To get a feel for some of the applications that were used, consider personalization as an application.
Know me, show me …
Personalization is a hot category of late. This technique involves collecting information about a user’s consumption patterns and using that to suggest future consumption. Amazon uses it to recommend books. Google uses it to place banner ads that are related to the search being performed. Tivo uses it to recommend and acquire other television programs that you may wish to watch. Taken to a more extensive level than is being done today, one would collect consumption information from any available point of consumption and use that to perform more exhaustive analysis. This would include gaming use, energy consumption, e-commerce purchases, video traffic patterns, voice call use, etc. Obviously, given the potentially intrusive nature of this development, one would also like to see a strong privacy policy simultaneously introduced.
Personalization of this type requires data collection that performs to agreed levels of accuracy. It requires methods by which to transfer data to an aggregation point where profiles can be drawn. It needs to make sure that the data cannot be spoofed or corrupted. Advertisers will depend upon this data to set rates and to monitor ad effectiveness. Likewise, the data being transferred needs to be secure to avoid eavesdropping which might potentially allow an unauthorized party to violate user privacy. All of these requirements and more were fed into the platform definition.
Shifting sands
Just as the technical markets and the business world evolved in response to the introduction of the PC and the Internet, the introduction of the three screens platform can also be expected to generate a lot of change. Some of the changes will be in the form of new applications while others will be in the form of major changes to existing platforms and market ecosystems.
As an example, consider the relationship between the smart phone and the PC. Over the last forty years, the PC has evolved through the desktop and the notebook and is now moving into the handheld generation. The handheld generation of the PC is the smart phone. This step causes telephony and computing to converge. The emergence of the three screens platform will enable the smart phone generation to work with the desktop and the notebook generations more completely.
Recognize that the smart phone has certain limitations in terms of its user interface, its battery size and its memory capacity which make it ideal for mobile applications, but deficient for work which stresses these functional blocks. For instance, it would be inconvenient to create a detailed Powerpoint presentation on a smart phone due to the limitations of the user interface. To compensate for this, the three screens platform functionality needs to allow the smart phone to temporarily exploit the functionality of a desktop or notebook (through docking) to expand the user interface while it is needed and while the user is stationary and then to conveniently disconnect and allow the smart phone to become mobile again when the work is done.
Operator challenges
As an example of a significant change in the ecosystem due to the three screens platform, consider events from the perspective of a quad play network operator. It benefits the network operator to connect the networks that they have together as tightly as possible. For instance, a wireless mobile operator wishing to create a video service can only deliver video via an expensive WAN link. By contrast, an operator that has wired video operations as well as wireless mobile operations has the option of creating a video service where video is delivered to a set top box and then transferred to the mobile device via a LAN or PAN link. They have access to more bandwidth and more cost effective delivery to make a business. By connecting the networks closely, customer churn is reduced and profitability can be optimized.
Additionally, a quad play network operator will be in a position to collect more consumption information to use for personalization of advertising. Instead of being limited to just telephony data, a quad play operator will be able to draw upon television traffic, Internet traffic, telephony, any connections which the mobile phone might eventually make (i.e. e-commerce, gaming, applications, location). When this data is combined, it enables much more precise profiling of a consumer and therefore makes a much more attractive solution for advertisers looking to deliver messages to a target audience. This enables the network operator to charge more for its superior targeting ability.
The quad play operator benefits from the three screens platform and is in a position to encourage and direct its evolution. This will tend to move the quad play operator into a control position in the computing ecosystem in a similar manner to the way that they own a control position in the mobile telephony and television ecosystems. The emergence and full development of the three screens platform and ecosystem will take several years to occur, but the speed with which it emerges will accelerate as manufacturers become aware of the market’s .
Additional information about the three screens platform and other upcoming market events can be found at www.mappingthewhitespaces.com.
Stephen Wood has spent the last eight years developing a series of behavioral models which explain the behavior of high tech markets and which provide insights about upcoming events. These models provide the basis for the projections described in this series. Additionally, Stephen has spent the last twenty years doing market analysis and product management in PAN, WAN and LAN technologies. Most recently, he held the role of President for the WiMedia Alliance in UWB personal area networking. Stephen’s website at www.mappingthewhitespaces.com discusses his models and forecast. He can be contacted at wood.stephen@verizon.net
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