Three Reasons Over-The-Top TV Apps Will Beat Big-Cable

With Apple bringing its second-generation living room box to market, it might be time for cable carriers to reconsider their decade-plus journey through the interactive TV desert. The Cupertino giant isn't the only competition, after all; Google's app-platforms are coming to an HDTV near you soon, the outlook for big cable's own app efforts has never looked more dim. So why are over-the-top apps likely to win out over the cable industry's efforts?

• Carriers are too slow and cautious. Speed is perhaps the biggest reason carriers are being left in the OTT app dust. Cable MSOs have been cautiously developing their app-platform for over a decade. But they have been slowed down by a combination of factors: a large installed base of underpowered infrastructure, a fiscally conservative predisposition towards investing CAPEX, a lack of enthusiasm for the necessary market development needed for interactive services (at retail, developer and hardware partner levels) and glacial testing and rollout process for their interactive services.
• The mobile-market proved the OTT app model works. In a sense, over-the-top won in mobile as well, when Apple, and later Android, clearly beat out on-deck carrier app stores in the U.S. If that fact is any indicator, Apple, Google and others building on their platforms could conceivably move ahead of the MSOs in reaching consumers with app-platforms in just a few years.
• Where developers go, consumers will follow. Anyone who knows someone working on an iPhone app, raise your hand. Now how many know someone developing a Java app for EBIF/OCAP? Thought so. Developer momentum is key; with an installed base of hundreds of thousands of hungry iPhone and Android developers now seeing a new market for TV apps, chances are high that these markets will see an explosion of innovation over the next few years.