Satellite TV is a dying industry

In the UK, BSkyB (the provider of Satellite TV) has been dominant for so long that it's difficult to imagine anything else - rival cable companies Telewest and NTL have even neared bankruptcy and been forced to merge. And yet, I expect the roles to be reversed five years from now, because of the web.

Satellite TV is not compatible with the internet, because it's a broadcast technology - TV aerials can receive signals from satellites, but they can't transmit anything back. That makes it impossible to browse the web - how can the satellite know which webpage you want?

BSkyB has two assets - a TV content business, and a satellite distribution pipeline. Its business model has always been to ruthlessly leverage each asset against the other, purchasing football rights to encourage satellite uptake, and then promoting new content to this audience.

As content moves to the internet, BSkyB's business model will fail. It will be left with a legacy asset - the satellite distribution pipeline - that's no longer relevant. It will have to compete in the TV content business on an equal footing with its competitors. And it will have many new deep-pocketed competitors, including Apple and Google (via YouTube).

Rupert Murdoch is an incredible businessman but he will struggle against competition like this!

Apple's new SDK

Well, Apple's new SDK was quite a surprise. It's not just a better version of Safari, though there is one coming. It's a native SDK with full-blown access to iPhone features like the touch screen, video, networking, and accelerometer.

What does this mean? Firstly, it's now clear that "touch" is a new platform, not just a new phone. We'll definitely now see more Apple "touch" devices - not just phones, but perhaps tablets and surfaces. All that SDK work is creating an ecosystem that other devices will slot into nicely.

Who will develop native apps? Apple showed an array of different providers, from the enterprise (Salesforce) to messaging (AOL) and gaming (Sega and EA Games). Personally I think gamers will be the most keen - they will love the accelerometer, advanced graphics and OpenGL tooling.

The last platform

Over the years we've seen some great platforms - Windows, Mac, and Linux come to mind. Now we have the Apple Touch platform. But the Salesforce demo was very instructive; why write an iPhone app when you can just publish a website?

If the Apple Touch SDK becomes very popular, it will be because it exploits the web's weaknesses (e.g. control over sensors such as accelerometers, and video quality animations). That's the other reason why gaming is a natural fit.

This surely won't continue for much longer. The web is closing the gap (e.g. recent work on an HTML 3D canvas element, or my sensors proposal).

Could the Apple Touch be the last great platform before the web subsumes even more? We'll just have to find out!

Firefox on the iPhone?

Now we've seen the iPhone SDK, a quick thought - why not create Firefox for the iPhone?

Since we already have Firefox on Mac, it shouldn't be too difficult to port - and it would help Firefox developers strengthen their approach for multi-touch.

Personally I would love to use Firefox extensions on the iPhone...