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So what does 2013 hold for online video? As someone who is immersed in this area 24/7, I thought it would be fun to compile my list of the top five trends that I’m seeing the this booming market-  and back up each of these predictions with a link to a relevant, engaging video.

#1 Productions like Netflix’s House of Cards will fuel OTT growth

Content will remain king and in 2013 a ruthless politician will make sure of that. Last Friday, Netflix premiered its highly anticipated production, House of Cards. The show, which stars Kevin Spacey and is produced and directed by David Fincher,  is Netflix’s biggest production to date and has been widely promoted to the mass market.  It positions the streaming service exactly where Netflix wants to be – as a direct competitor to premium cable channels. The big question is whether House of Cards will help Netflix to achieve its goal of gaining more subscribers. We predict that it will do just that and that House of Cards will be the first show to truly level the playing field for the long list of over-the-top TV providers (Hulu, Apple, Google Play, Amazon Prime etc.).

Watch: House of Cards – the official trailer

#2 Tablets will drive creativity

2012 was the prologue, with more and more giants releasing their own inexpensive tablets. The Jelly Bean OS finally brought consumers an iPad-like user experience – and Google and Amazon complemented this with great devices that were much cheaper than Apple’s. With tablet sales on the rise, PC sales declined. While the post PC-world isn’t here just yet, the trend is clear. In the near future, many consumers will likely choose to buy a tablet before upgrading their current PC. The new tablets are also stronger than ever before and have more storage so they can be used to create content and not just consume it. The result will surely be more creative and productive apps like Adobe Ideas, iMockups for iPad, Cinefly and iMovie. Soon enough, the post-PC world will no longer be a trend. It will be a reality.

Watch: tablets are used for so much more these days – here’s one cool example

#3 Smart TV adoption could kick-start the rise of the ‘cord never’ households

According to Informa’s latest Smart TV device forecasts (November 2012), more than 220 million Smart TV sets will be sold worldwide in 2017, up from the 54 million that were estimated to have been sold during 2012. Informa forecasts that 31% of households worldwide will own at least one Smart TV by 2017, with household penetration much higher in North America (63%) and Western Europe (64%).

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We know that today we are living in the age of the so-called knowledge economy. This is a natural shift from the (previous) industrial economy that ruled our world before terms like microprocessors, dot.com and Facebook were born.

So today the knowledge economy is all about innovation… and in the realm of enterprises that means two things:

Knowledge – inside “learning organisations”

“Firms must become learning organisations, continuously adapting management and skills to accommodate to new technologies. They will be increasingly connected via networks, where interactive learning involving creators, producers and users in experimentation and exchange of information drives innovation.”

Collaboration –

“A knowledge economy is, in effect, a hierarchy of networks, driven by the acceleration of the rate of change and the rate of learning, where the opportunity and capability to get access to and join knowledge-intensive and learning-intensive relations determines the socio-economic position of individuals and firms.”
(Source: The Knowledge-based Economy, Organization For Economy Co-operation and Development, 1996)

Here is a visual representation of the same ideas:

These are important factors but we should also keep in mind the most important one – the human factor. By 2018, “digital natives” will transform the workplace. The use of IT will intensify in financial institutions as well as education and media companies that wish to stay competitive.

… and this is where video becomes vital.

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