VOD market almost doubled in France in 2008

VOD market is on high growth in France. According to GFK & NPA Conseil, almost 6 millions VOD have been streamed or donwloaded during first 2008 semester; that’s twice last year result! It seems that SVoD is a strong contributor to these results with over 25 000  new subscribers each month (see previous article on VOD pricing & customer experience at nbry.wordpress.com/2007/12/).

Amongst others SVoD offerings, one can now give in to temptation at Free (Free Home Video or Frissons Extremes), 9Cegetel (Pass Kids with Titeuf, Pokémon, Bugs Bunny, Kid Paddle…), and Orange (24/24 Jeunesse, and the expected shortcoming cinema offering based on exclusive deal with HBO & warner).

I guess also that revisited user interface can change a lot in consumer consumption: that seems to be the case for the new interface that we designed at 9Cegetel last year, and which has a strong impact.

Let’s wait now for the end of year to record that VOD revenue overpasse the m€ 50 threshold!

There’s creativity in content, and in business model as well!

I was part of the Seminar “Creative content on-line” this week. This seminar organized within the framework of the French Presidency of the European Union, was set-up by the Ministry for Culture and Communication, with the talented support of the Media Development Division (Laure Kaltenbach, Elisabeth Barges, etc).

Teamed with Jean-Pierre Morel, former executive manager and president at TF1, I had the great pleasure to manage a workshop dedicated to business model for content online. Guess what, things are really starting to move to make all kind of contents available to consumer in a legal way, and embracing a variety of business model depending on content industry (games, movies, music, press): there’s creativity in content, and in business model as well!

From ad support to device bundle, through rental and pay download, syndication, free streaming, …, this was a unique opportunity to share views with skilled representatives from a large number of industries and countries: thanks Laure for making me part of it!

You will find the complete conclusions at : www.ddm.gouv.fr/article.php3?id_article=1383.

Over 1 million French Homes passed with HD IPTV

IPTV has reached mass market status in France. The reason for this success is due to a strong ADSL subscriber base of over 15 million customers, the good value for money offered by triple play services, and healthy competition amongst ISPs.

By the end of this year, France will have between five and six million IPTV subscribers. Of those, based on HD devices uptake, I’d expect a quarter to have access to HD channels such as France 2 and M6*.

*that use ATEME’s H.264 encoders.