041906: Study says Internet to surpass all other media

This story was taken from www.inq7.net

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http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=72951

Study says Internet to surpass all other media
First posted 09:02pm (Mla time) April 19, 2006
By Leo Magno
INQ7.net

Consumers will pay more for Internet content than for content coming from any other medium, according to a study by PriceWaterhouse Coopers. Television is still the medium which enjoys the most revenues coming from consumers. This was true in 1998 and continued to be so by the end of 2005, according to the study. Internet access was a close second, coming from a little more than a billion dollars in 1998 to more than 2 billion in 2005. Books came in third, while film came in fourth with a sharp increase. Newspapers came in fifth, recorded music sixth, magazines seventh, video games eighth and radio came in at ninth. There was a noticeable flatline for books, newspapers, magazines, recorded music and radio from 1998 to 2005 in terms of consumer spending. Film, TV and video games showed sharp increases, with the Internet showing the sharpest rise. "In the next few years, people will pay more for Internet content than for any other medium, including TV," said James Johnson, vice president for mobility at Intel, who cited the PriceWaterhouse Coopers study at the Intel Developer Forum. "This is because people are also using the Internet for TV, video and personal content." Johnson added that the number of audio and video files being downloaded from the Internet more than quadrupled in the last 24 months. Johnson cited a December, 2005 study by Legg Mason which showed that audio and video file transfers jumped from about 500 million in 2003 to more than 2 billion at the end of 2005. "There is a whole new generation growing up without buying music CDs and movie DVDs," he said. "There is a whole new generation getting content from the web. The web suddenly went video." As promising as the data cited seem to be, Johnson also cited problems which might hamper this growth. "First, no one has broadband. Second, the Internet isn't mobile," he said. Johnson cited studies by the International Data Corp. and other research companies which show that only 250 million people worldwide have broadband connections, out of one billion who are already on the Internet. Comparatively, 1.5 billion people have TV, 1.9 billion have cellular phones and 2 billion have radios. He added that wireless and mobile broadband is still at its infancy, with few people effectively getting Internet content from their handhelds or cellular phones. Intel is trying to solve this problem, Johnson said, by introducing high-performance but energy efficient processors for mobile devices.

 

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