Application Wars

Fans of sci-fi will be familiar with the genre that starts in a post-apocalyptic scenario sometime in the future. Terminator and the Rise of the Machines for example, or take your pick of various nuclear meltdown aftermaths.

In my brave attempts to look at the future of content I would base my hit screenplay after the Application Wars.

It seems that there's a new platform - application - client - service every week at the moment. Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, Zattoo, Hulu, iPlayer, 4OD and I'm sure there'll be another by the time I finish this blog.

OK you could download them all and not miss a few gigabytes but experience suggests that people - as in the mass audience everyone is chasing - are not going to download and install more than one or two applications designed to do the same thing.

So there are two scenarios.

Either one application is dominant - the iTunes scenario. That looks unlikely. Major video content owners like NBC, Fox, BBC and others show willingness to distribute widely but also seem keen to avoid a situation where they are dependent on a dominant platform. They are developing their own and supporting others.

The other scenario is that there is a proliferation for some time but eventually the whole idea of a proprietary platform goes the way of the Cold War. Let's call that the MP3 scenario. The barriers to this scenario are that proprietary systems have better control and security but if someone can address those problems then it is undoubtedly the best solution for both content owners and users.