At IPTV World Forum in London last week, busy conference sessions and a bustling exhibit hall seemed to belie the gloom and doom stalking the economy as a whole.

Reinforcing this impression, IPTV subscribers in Western Europe topped 10 million at the end of 2008, up 45% on the previous year, according to new figures from the Broadband Forum announced on the first day of the event. France was the largest IPTV market in Western Europe, accounting for over half of the region’s subscribers.  Globally, there were more than 21 million subscribers to IPTV services at the end of 2008, up 63% on the previous year.

That said, conference speakers foresaw challenges ahead for the IPTV sector clustering around three focal points: the consumption habits and expectations of digital natives, the impact of web TV, and mobile.

Myles MacBean, Disney Online’s Vice President for EMEA, noted that connected interactive media are now the primary part of kids’ entertainment experience, and emphasised the importance of the “cross-platform, cross-media, cross-business model” world with Disney content available on mobile, console, PC, and set top box – “it’s one platform now”, he commented.

Many speakers emphasised the rapid evolution of mobile: “it’s not about downloading, it’s about connecting” according to MacBean. ESPN’s Robin Ashton highlighted ESPN’s focus on mobile video, and pointed out that in India and China most people’s experience of the web is, in fact, mobile.

Richard Gale, Playboy TV’s Director of Marketing & Sales, commented that he didn’t see much IPTV innovation across Europe, where most activity seemed to be around catch-up and freeview services. “I think the innovation will come from the web TV guys who are waiting for the Ethernet cable to plug into the back of the TV”, he commented. Scale and standards are vital, according to Gale – content owners don’t want to have to develop an application 50 times for 50 different IPTV platforms: “I won’t bother; I’ll build it for the web”.

For the future of TV we should look to Japan, according to Harmonic’s David Price, who wondered if the TV will go the way of the fixed line telephone. “A whole generation has grown up using their laptop as their TV”. In Japan, all TV sets now come equipped with at least one Ethernet port, which led him to ask how long the days of the set top box will continue.

There were of course success stories to share. Michael Comish, CEO of streamed film and TV site Blinkbox emphasised that success was dependent on offering things that are different to broadcast TV: “for us, it’s about being at the front end of the long tail.” Founded in 2006, Blinkbox had 580,000 unique UK visitors in January 2009, putting it just below Channel 4’s on demand service 4OD in popularity.

Danish cable operator YouSee shared an insider’s view of their subscription-based web TV service, launched last year, which features 17 of the most popular Danish TV channels and is available on subscription to all Danish households. The service is designed to create new revenue streams from the non-cabled part of Denmark, and to create a PC-based multi-room solution for subscribers.

As Disney’s MacBean puts it, “It’s a new ecosystem that’s in complete flux”.

Hard to believe, but it’s time to start planning for this year’s Streaming Media Europe conference, to be held on 15 & 16 October (with pre-conference workshops on 14 October), again at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith. A testament to the continued vitality of online video in the face of tough economic times, last year’s show bucked the trade show trend and saw an increase of more than 50% in attendees over the 2007 show: 768 visitors from 23 countries, and more than 70 speakers.

We’re now soliciting speaker proposals for the 2009 show. While we welcome all potential speakers, we’re especially interested in end users who can speak to the challenges, trends, and opportunities they are dealing with as they deploy online video and music strategies in both consumer-facing and internal communications. Submissions can be made directly here,  but be sure to read our guidelines first.

Once again, we’ll be having two tracks, one focusing on Technology & Content and one on Business & Strategy. We’ll likely have a total of about 20 sessions, as well as four keynotes. Stay tuned for more information about those keynotes, and we look forward to your speaker submissions.

I received an interesting email the other day about a new book to be published by Information Age looking at Streaming Media in Higher Education. Editors Charles Wankel of St. John’s University in New York and J. Sibley Law of the streaming media company Saxon Mills. It looks like a very useful book, and long overdue. Here’s the text of the email:

We are soliciting chapter proposals for this book on all topics related to streaming media in higher education.  Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) evaluation, interactive video, collaboration through video, new pedagogic vistas providing visualization in higher education, integration of streaming media within the gamut of other new media, digital video supported case-based teaching.

The book seeks to address questions such as: What roles do digital videos play in online and traditional students’ meaningful learning process? How does streaming media add to the development of university teaching across disciplines? What are the further implications? Etc.

Chapter submissions due April 16. Proposals should be at least 100 words, ideally more. Send them to both wankelc@stjohns.edu and sib@saxonmills.com .
Full chapter drafts we be due September 30, 2009.  We anticipate publication in December 2009. We have an excellent publisher lined-up for this volume.

Streaming Media’s Dan Rayburn reports the following on his Business of Video blog:

With all the carriers and telcos entering the CDN space of late, it’s no surprise that European carrier TeliaSonera plans to enter the CDN market and will probably make the announcement at the MIPTV show in Cannes next month.

TeliaSonera is the number one carrier of IP traffic in Europe and their website says they provide direct connections to their network for more than 80% of all European broadband service providers. They basically own the vast majority of eyeballs in Europe. Currently, many of the CDNs who have delivery services in Europe buy from TeliaSonera and it appears as if they now want to cut out the CDNs and take that business on themselves.

I’m also hearing that they plan to offer a video content management service across their network and plan to make an acquisition in the market to add this functionality to their offering, although I don’t know who they plan to acquire or how close a deal may be.

TeliaSonera will need to do a lot more than just be able to deliver bits if they want to truly enter the CDN market and if they do plan to add some applications to the network to help manage video assets, it’s a similar approach that Level 3 is taking in the United States. The CDN market is going to look very different 24 months from now and while it will take many years for the shift to take place, we’re already starting to see a lot of the carriers and telcos lay the ground work for what it to come.