Microsoft Mediaroom outlines interactive IPTV strategy

On Microsoft’s version of open: We are toying with a lot of ideas, but the challenge is how can our customers quickly get interesting apps out to market? That is my main mission – figuring out how I can get great apps as quickly as possible that drive subscribership and loyalty. Everything we do is for that end. We are thinking about potentially creating an online category where we host a place where developers can offer their wares to our customers; where customers can post interesting things they are doing. Everyone can see and get inspired by ideas. If someone is selling an app, they can hook up with customers with a transaction offline. We can create better test suites or even a lab. They are under investigation, but it’s integration before deployment. Everyone in front of everyone and get that ecosystem really rolling. There are a lot of groups looking at applications for various devices and services. There is a unified effort on creating centralized marketplaces. We are at the table in those discussions and talking about a marketplace that might make sense. It may be something we see down the road.

On interactivity’s troubled past: I am the first to remind everyone that interactive TV never made anyone money. It came out glowingly in everyone’s services in the early 1990s, but then it disappeared because it wasn’t making money or making the money they put into it. I wasn’t a big believer in interactive TV until the technology completely changed. There is so much more potential for something like IPTV to take advantage of the unbelievable breadth of services and resources that the Web offers. Because there are a bazillion cool things you can do on the web now and your TV can become a view port into the ones that make sense, that changes that game, and it’s much easier for IPTV to do that now. Not to build out their infrastructure and do it later, but do it right out of the gate. That’s what our customers are doing. They see it to their advantage. Everyone is chasing each other, and that’s really healthy for consumers. There will be failures like in the past, but there will start to be things you can’t live without.

Next: The business case for interactivity – will TV follow mobile app stores?