Why the assumption that cord cutter growth will stagnate? As more people do it, the "cordless" options will get better, and even more people will switch. I predict by 2020 or so, fully half of the current TV owners will have left the normal TV providers...
Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
- Thread starter BRiT
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Deleted member 13524
Guest
You and I know perfectly well that cord-cutting won't stagnate for 11 years, that's a bit ludicrous IMO.
A much more realistic estimation would be a 100% increase in cord-cutting each year.
That would mean:
2 million in 2014
4 million in 2015
8 million in 2016
16 million in 2017
32 million in 2018
End of cable providers in 2019, around 5,5 years after the xbone's launch.
Besides, it remains to be seen if the people who buy a next-gen console will be the among the first customers to cancel the cable subscription, since they already spent money putting a brand-new system capable of on-demand TV in their living rooms.
You're insane to market conditions to think the rate of cord-cutting will increase 100% each year.
Realistic rate of growth based on reality and not wishes: (366000-325000)/325000 * 100 % = 12.65% growth rate per quarter.
Realistic rate of growth based on reality and not wishes: (366000-325000)/325000 * 100 % = 12.65% growth rate per quarter.
- There were 366,000 total net losses across all TV/broadband subs in Q2, according to SNL Kagan.
- The rate of losses is increasing. In Q2 2012, only 325,000 subs were lost
This seems to me a weird discussion. In the UK we have no such thing as 'cord cutting'. People have the option to subscribe to cable and many do so for the benefits. So here's you talking about freeing the US people from the oppressive cable boxes, and over the seas we have people voluntarily signing up for the same for the better experience than free TV (although free TV is pretty good as far as contemporary crap-nothing-to-wathc-300 reality TV channels goes). I don't have cable as an option where I live. I would like to have Virgin or Sky or whoever provide it as the monthly cost of TV+phone+broadband is much better value than the broadband+phone we currently have.
Blazkowicz
Legend
I have a friend with a cable box : it's a Netgear modem and router. No TV in sight
Did they call out how many subscribers dropped the TV but kept the broadband? That's what I did.
I'd actually like to see that as well.
In the Cleveland area it's usually only a $10 difference to have Internet Service without other services and then bundle Internet Service with Basic Cable TV. So most typically get that level of service too. It's almost a waste not to.
It's one of the tricks of the market, anything to be able to tout your subscriber numbers to be able to get the best rates.
Well I suppose it's the same here. Of course we have the option!
I cant tell whats supposedly different in the UK, is it much better over the air selection?
Here you typically get only a few basic channels OTA, to get anything else requires a cable or dish sub.
Cable is just a monthly bill that some would rather do without, hence cord cutting, mostly those people turn to netflix and the like. The problem is many things are not available to the cord cutter, at least not easily (such as NFL)
Freeview gets you some 70, ish ordinary entertainment channels from drama to film to general entertainment to kids TV. We get the 4 main (oldest) channels in HD which are very sharp. Wiki has a list. Cable gives an option to buy into the latest content from the US, mostly, and sports, but it's generally wrapped up in package deals that make it worth doing. Certainly there's no concept of being tied to a cord and wanting to free oneself from it.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Cord cutting is far from mainstream at this point. It'll be many years before that plays out IMO.
It's also an aspirational thing for many consumers. While they may not be cutting the cord anytime soon they may make purchases that take into account that aspiration. So a system with a cable box interface that may not get used in the future may have a slightly higher bar* to rise above especially if the system is 100 bucks more than it's competitor.
*
A 30% higher bar 
You obviously mean $40 more expensive, once you take into account camera/voice control additional price for the PS4.
Buying enough accessories to mimic as much of the XB1 functionality, minus the STB bit, might also be aspirational as well.
So either 100 or 40 dollars depending on interest and on ability to match actions to goals. Yes that seems to be the difference then. Here you'd typically get 3-5 channels over the air. Basically CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and maybe a couple more. Whereas a reasonable basic cable package will get you ~ maybe 70 channels, with all the big ones like CNN, ESPN, etc included. So a big difference.
I guess it's probably a lot easier to blanket the airwaves of a small country like the UK with free TV.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
It's also an aspirational thing for many consumers. While they may not be cutting the cord anytime soon they may make purchases that take into account that aspiration. So a system with a cable box interface that may not get used in the future may have a slightly higher bar* to rise above especially if the system is 100 bucks more than it's competitor.
*A 30% higher bar
No. I don't think most consumers even know what cord cutting is even, much less aspire to it.
Remember that US pay-tv penetration is only falling after an extended period of growth when it peak at 88% in 2010. So realistically the pay-tv market didn't have that much room to grow at all.
You get free channels many other places though, like Europe and Australia. My guess is that in the UK we only had 5 channels until we went digital unless you bought cable or satellite, and these had low adoption and were available far later than the US. In the US you've had cable options for years and I think more people bought into it, establishing a different economic culture. If you have the airwaves free, there's nothing stopping a similar digital broadcast option in the US as to everywhere else, pending investment in a big of radio gear.
Do your TVs come with digital tuners built in? Yeah...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8096438.stm. So the Us has switched from digital to analogue. There's nothing stopping them fitting 50+ channels in that same airspace. That companies aren't doing is because I guess they already have everyone subscribing, so why would they start offering that content for free? Whereas in the UK, those channels had few subscribers and would make a lot more money they guess from going public and free, I suppose.
Differences like this make an all-in-one box difficult for all territories. Different countries have different requirements, and you don't want to overspend on hardware features that some people aren't going to need. That's where peripherals can pick up the slack, like the TV tuners for PS3. If people want their console to connect as it currently does using MCE, MS should enable a widget or app at suitable cost to make it worthwhile, I guess.
