Innovation case study for television distribution business
1. The television distribution industry is in transition, as alternative distribution technologies and new business models emerge. Use the technology cycle to assess the state of technological change for television distribution. What part of the cycle is the industry in now and what is the future for distributing television? What is your prediction about the potential impact of ‘cord cutting’?
Based on technology cycle theory and current state of distribution technology in the market, I conclude that the industry is in “Era of Ferment”. The “Era of Ferment” is defined as “The new technology might offer breakthrough capabilities, but there is little agreement about that the major subsystems of the technology should be or how they should be configured together” (Schilling, 2010). In current distribution business, cable company (Rogers, Cogeco and Shaw) was the dominate players in distributing television for so many years. In recent years, telephone companies such as Bell and Telus spent billions of dollars to upgrade their existing network to use Fibre distributing television services to compete with Cable companies in bundling their other services. However, the business model of phone companies is not much different from the model of cable companies. With the entering of the Netflix and Apple TV etc into Canadian market, the business models are evolving from distribution of TV channels through cable/fiber to distribution of individual content through Internet. TV views are not restricted by what TV channels are showing but they are picking what they want to watch and when they want to watch it. This new distribution does offer breakthrough capabilities but at the same time there are major shortcomings on delivering live TV and high definition TV programs to millions of viewers, which are most TV subscribers are accustomed to get nowadays. That’s why we are in an era that new technology is emerging but there is no dominant design selected yet.
For ‘cord
Based on technology cycle theory and current state of distribution technology in the market, I conclude that the industry is in “Era of Ferment”. The “Era of Ferment” is defined as “The new technology might offer breakthrough capabilities, but there is little agreement about that the major subsystems of the technology should be or how they should be configured together” (Schilling, 2010). In current distribution business, cable company (Rogers, Cogeco and Shaw) was the dominate players in distributing television for so many years. In recent years, telephone companies such as Bell and Telus spent billions of dollars to upgrade their existing network to use Fibre distributing television services to compete with Cable companies in bundling their other services. However, the business model of phone companies is not much different from the model of cable companies. With the entering of the Netflix and Apple TV etc into Canadian market, the business models are evolving from distribution of TV channels through cable/fiber to distribution of individual content through Internet. TV views are not restricted by what TV channels are showing but they are picking what they want to watch and when they want to watch it. This new distribution does offer breakthrough capabilities but at the same time there are major shortcomings on delivering live TV and high definition TV programs to millions of viewers, which are most TV subscribers are accustomed to get nowadays. That’s why we are in an era that new technology is emerging but there is no dominant design selected yet.
For ‘cord