Rick Herman, Chief Strategy Officer at MobiTV, offers insight on how to harness the power of OTT and bring a streamlined experience to the consumer:

What is the most important next step to engage consumers in smart home solutions, connected entertainment services, and/or value-added services like tech support and connected health?

While interest in smart home solutions continues to grow, mainstream adoption is still at the front end of the growth curve. The key to consumer adoption is awareness and education—consumers need to understand what smart home devices are, who sells them and where to buy them. They also need to realize the value proposition and benefits of connected devices. In the digital entertainment industry, there are an array of connected entertainment solutions geared toward turning our TVs into a hub for gaming and smart home gadgets, yet people do not fully understand their features and capabilities. New strategies are needed to raise awareness of smart home devices and drive adoption. Additionally, interoperability and easy installation and use are critical to adoption. For video specifically, search and discovery are the largest issue right now—as content de-bundles, it becomes harder to find, play and monetize.

What is the biggest driver for the connected consumer market?

Multi-screen services across traditional and non-traditional screens, coupled with OTT programming are driving the connected consumer market as people want 24/7 access to content anytime, anywhere and on any device. We’re particularly seeing this around major TV show premiers like Game of Thrones and large-scale sporting events, such as the Super Bowl. Last year’s Super Bowl drew in 528,000 viewers, making it the most-watched live-stream of a single event. The Sochi Winter Olympics saw a doubling of the number of live-streamed hours from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics with more than 1,000 hours of streaming content offered to over 100 million cable, satellite and telco subscribers. Today consumers require around-the-clock access to broadcast-quality streaming, regardless of licensing agreements, content rights and authentication. For this reason, many consumers are investing in streaming devices—like HDMI dongles—enabling more access to more OTT services than ever before. It’s paramount that providers continue to introduce solutions that will allow them to still offer the same access, quality of experience and monetization that today’s content consumers are accustomed to.

What are the most important initiatives your company is taking in 2015?

Fulfilling consumers’ insatiable appetites for live and on-demand content whenever and wherever they want by forgoing more strategic partnerships with OTT providers, wireless carriers and media companies. We’re also focused on expanding our global footprint to bring our multiscreen service platform to the masses. Finally, MobiTV is in the midst of launching an HDMI streaming stick that will put a vast library of media at consumer’s fingertips and will leverage a mobile-first approach to search, discovery, navigation and control.

Rick Herman will be speaking on the panel “Streaming as Standard: The New User Experience” Wednesday, May 20 at 1:15 PM during CONNECTIONS™ in San Francisco, CA. Other speakers include representatives from Giraffic Technologies, Harmonic, Roku, and Sharp.

For more information on CONNECTIONS™ speakers, sessions, or topics, visit www.connectionsus.com. Register to attend today!

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