|
According to John Allen, chief executive officer of Irish iTV (Interactive television) software company Digisoft.tv, the controlled roll out of television commerce (t-commerce), combined with the increasing take-up of digital TV (DTV), will see t-commerce outstrip e-commerce within the next five years.
"Around 245,000 Irish households are currently subscribed to Sky Interactive, while recent figures from the CSO showed that 262,700 homes here had Internet capable computers. This shows the enormous potential of this rapidly emerging market," said Allen.
"In addition, when t-commerce becomes more widely available, it will not be like e-commerce, which suffered from a rush to market that lead to the Internet being flooded with poor products and services. Everybody in the iTV sector is taking their time to ensure that t-commerce will be implemented properly," Allen told ElectricNews.Net.
He added that he expected to see several t-commerce applications launched in the Irish market on a pilot basis within the next six months. A "significant" roll out of such services would then take place in the first-half of next year once providers have honed the design of their interfaces, predicted Allen.
And, according to research firms, iTV-based retail is set to grow rapidly in the coming years. Datamonitor, for example, recently forecasted that consumer spend on iTV retail in Western Europe will exceed USD6 billion in 2006, which is equivalent to almost USD100 per digital TV household. It also said that most of this spending will be transferred from consumer spending over the Internet and/or on the high street.
Sky has already shown in the UK that revenues can be generated from interactive services. Surrey Sports, a bookmaker owned by Sky, has over 93,000 interactive TV betting registrations and on average receives more than 60,000 bets per week. In July, Sky told ElectricNews.Net that it planned to introduce interactive services in Ireland by the last quarter of this year.
RTE is "actively looking" at introducing iTV services, its head of new media, Eugene Murray, told ElectricNews.Net, but is constrained from doing so at present due to technical and financial issues.
"None of the digital television operators have introduced a return path of Ireland to date, so RTE can't make such services available via their platforms until they do so. However, until there is also a critical mass of digital television subscribers in Ireland it is not financially viable for RTE to introduce iTV applications," commented Murray. Among the iTV services that RTE is considering offering are voting, e-mail, banking, travel and betting.
Cork-based Digisoft.tv was founded in 1999 and has developed a range of software applications for the management and control of viewer interaction via the television. Among its programs are DigiQuote, which enables the sale of insurance over iTV.
The company employs 18 people and on Friday it opened new offices in Cork Airport Business Park. Digisoft.tv and RTE are to jointly host a conference in October that will look at the present and future development of interactive television in Ireland
|
