Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Mark Hyland, VP of Sales and Marketing, QuickPlay Media (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You took the path that you were going to sell infrastructure to pay TV people to move their video to be available on mobile devices?

Mark Hyland: Yes, and that we would do it from the cloud.

SM: This is a good point to do an ecosystem check. The “TV everywhere” value proposition has been used by a lot of different players in your market. Help me parse through that nightmare of positioning challenges that you must have faced. What about Apple TV?

MH: If you look at some big buckets, you’ve got operator-provided services. So, you’ve got Comcast delivering cable to people’s living rooms, and they’ve got their iPad apps and so on. There are a lot of companies in Comcast’s shoes that are looking to deliver better service and more platforms, but they’re not looking at getting a bunch of incremental revenue. They’re using it as a churn reduction, as loyalty, as building value for their whole service, raising revenue per user (RPU), but they’re not necessarily saying you have to pay an extra $5 or $10 a month to look at the video on your iPad.

Then you’ve got a vast range of what are sometimes called over-the-top providers, so your Apple TV, Google, YouTube, Netflix, the whole gamut. We, basically, are of the view that there will be winners from both camps. We think OTT players like Netflix have done an amazing job in leading the user experience on multiple devices. On the other hand, we think there are some important arrows in the quivers of the pay TV operators, namely their ongoing and substantial relationships with content providers. Not always easy or happy relationships, but fundamentally, they’re very much interdependent in terms of the big cable media providers and the big cable companies.

SM: So, a major source of revenue for the video producers?

MH: Yes, a major source of revenue.

SM: One of the criticisms that Netflix, for instance, has is that on their streaming, the amount of content available is relatively low, and the variety is limited. Is a pay TV value proposition on a better range of content?

MH: It is. With pay TV providers, you’ve got a better mix of first-run movies. You’ve got, for now, a better mix of cable-type content. So, ESPN, MTV, HBO, STARZ, that kind of content is either available or it’s available if you can authenticate that you’re an existing subscriber to a pay TV operator.

SM: When you say pay TV, you are including the cable vendors?

MH: Yes. It’s really cable, but also IPTV and satellite. So, we can call it cable for shorthand, but by pay TV operator, that’s what I mean.

You’ve got this battle, I guess, that’s been well described between over-the-top players and traditional cable providers. Ultimately, there may be some form of interaction. I view Netflix almost like a cable channel. It’s almost like a version of HBO where you’ve got a certain type of content. You’ve got it across multiple platforms. You pay a certain amount. We’ll see, but that may end up being the future of Netflix, that it’s almost like a channel or cluster of channels.

SM: That’s an interesting perspective. In your world view, you think you can provide the infrastructure to turn a cable provider into a Netflix competitor.

MH: That’s right.

SM: That’s your nutshell positioning, right?

MH: Yes. That’s it in a nutshell. We think that the OTT providers like Netflix have proven that you can deliver a great service over the Internet effectively. And we think that while the cable folks have good relationships, they own their networks. They have the ability to bundle other services to their customers, which is a powerful advantage. They don’t necessarily have the experience of building software at Internet speed. So, we’re blending that mix of Internet technology and more of a Silicon Valley ethos with an understanding of traditional TV infrastructure, content rights, and the needs of that world. I think that’s an important part of our positioning. But still, even doing that, there are lots of people who say they’re doing that. If you look at IBC [International Broadcasting Convention] in Amsterdam or NAB in Vegas [the National Association of Broadcasters, which holds its yearly conference Las Vegas], you’ll see hauls and hauls of vendors saying [the same thing].

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Mark Hyland, VP of Sales and Marketing, QuickPlay Media
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