The West has traditionally been the leaders
in technological advances over the years, and sees itself as the the
most proactive and current part of the world.
But market growth figures and the like are now showing that
the East is growing and achieving massive leaps forward in
technology.
It’s citizens are embracing new ventures and online advances
quicker
than just about anywhere else on the planet.
Take IPTV for instance, a relatively new innovation that,
while for many years past had been stuck in figment mode, is now
making its way
into many markets, and swiftly.
Internet Protocol Television
IPTV, short for Internet Protocol Television, has been
something
sought by telecom companies the world over ever since high-speed
broadband lines were laid across great swathes of urban, suburban, and
even rural landscapes.
The presence of those lines now allows for those
inhabiting the telecoms industry to contend at last with those in the
cable and satellite spheres.
Of course, technologically speaking, IPTV is a technology
reserved
not only for companies whose businesses were once solely rooted in
telephone services.
Cable companies with the power to provide
high-speed Internet access over thick-gauge copper lines can certainly
make headway into the IPTV sector as well.
But only since fiber optic
cable was lit up for a significant number of residential markets has
any large company seriously considered IPTV a viable next-gen solution
to home entertainment.
Asia Has Biggest Appetite for IPTV
And Asia, as it turns out, will be the continent with the
biggest
appetite for IPTV in the years to come, according to a forecast made by
iSuppli, a research firm which specializes in tracking the goings on in
tech sectors around the globe.
More and more consumers in the US and Europe will
have
the chance to siphon broadband-delivered television to their plasma and
LCD screens in greater and greater quantities.
Meanwhile China and countries
surrounding it will very likely see their own IPTV markets boom at
rates far more astonishing.
What exactly is meant by “astonishing
rates”? The researchers at
iSuppli claim that the global market for IPTV, while a sizable $779.2
million in 2006 alone, will
jump to
$26.3 billion by the end of 2011.
And iSuppli predicts that the majority of subscriptions
that
contribute to that eventual figure will be made in China. (No pun
intended.)
Why will this Asia-centric expansion be so much more
phenomenal that
those in the West? Well, it’s pretty simple, really.
China is
a country
nearly the size of the US, but with more than quadruple the population.
And the country’s wealth is growing extremely quickly.
That
means more
of the 1.3 billion or so Chinese citizens are going to have more money
to spend on things – digital entertainment being one of them.
Growth in New Technologies
Growth in
adoption of new technologies in China has already happened in a big
way. Just look at the countries cellular makeup.
More than 450 million
cellular phone owners/subscribers are now part of the fabric of modern
China.
That’s no doubt a very big number, but when one
looks
at the
specific catalysts for that growth, it’s actually quite easy
to
understand why China is where it is at the moment, and will be in the
years to come.
And we can’t forget China’s successful bid
for the 2008 Olympic
Summer Games, to be held in Beijing. The presence of such an event
ensures that China’s government and various industries will
in unison
contribute to the advancement of country on the whole.
This is
presumably to showcase China as a modern, up-to-date nation, of course.
The side effect of the nation’s build-up of its
technological
infrastructure means more Chinese will be hopping onto the Net and
enjoying the fruits of high-speed broadband. One of those fruits is,
naturally, IPTV.
In Conclusion
All in all, we should do nothing but welcome the expansion of
IPTV,
as it allows for a better more “connected”
experience than that which
has been available for the last few decades.
The integration of basic
television services and properties of the Web world will allow for a
very interesting cohesion of, well, lots of things.
And the fact that
the East is more or less on equal footing with the West (in many ways,
it’s the other way around, really) means that more people
will see more
of everything, and well, that’s a great thing all around, no?
Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
