August 2019 Cover

AUGUST 2019. ISSUE 4

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE IN THE MODERN MEDIA WORLD

B I G DATA , CONT ENT AND EVERY TH I NG I N BE TWEEN

At Apple, Jobs’ design and Wozniak’s architecture gave Apple a cool factor that still resonates with its core customers many years later.  Amazon built one the most robust product review systems ever and Google established trust within the marketplace with its organic search (prohibiting the influence from advertisers that caused past search companies to miss the mark in this area).  Facebook connected the world like never before, and one of its biggest differentiators was photo tagging in lockstep with its improvements to privacy over time. The question we are working hard to figure out is what competencies and features will separate the good from the great in this next phase of competition?

For many years AT&T’s primary competitors were familiar faces in the telecommunications space, such as Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.  As our business continues to broaden in both size and scope, we find ourselves pitted against new, fast-growing and highly creative competition.  FAANG as they’ve become known as in recent years and were often referenced to during our most recent Department of Justice (DOJ) trial, consists of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google.  In the last 15-20 years, this group has realized growth unparalleled in history, and we’ve decided to take a deeper look at some of the creativity that’s driven their formidable positioning and areas of opportunity for our company in the years to come. When analyzing the business landscape, the main areas of innovation in the coming years will be streaming content, targeted advertising and search, with cloud capabilities and share of time for consumers being increasingly relevant.  In briefly looking back at the past, subtle product feature differences are what separated many of AT&T’s new competition from the pack.

Streaming Content: What’s going on? How can we remain competitive in this market?

With 5G on the horizon and the increasing demand for content on-the-go, it is no wonder why the entertainment industry is in the midst of an interesting shift. The days of utilizing a shared platform like Netflix or Hulu to view the latest TV shows and movies are a thing of the past.