2014/01/02 QPlay: Another Entrant into the Crowded Streaming Media Player Market
By Mike Paxton
There’s been some low-level buzz in recent weeks about a potential new streaming media player (SMP) product. While a new entrant into the already-crowded SMP market is not really news (by MRG’s count, there are currently over 30 vendors shipping products), what is newsworthy is the management team connected to the latest rumors.
According to two separate media reports, a company called InVisioneer is on the cusp of announcing a product called QPlay. The principals at InVisioneer are TiVo co-founders Michael Ramsey and Jim Barton, two Silicon Valley innovators with a solid track record of product development success. According to a somewhat cryptic InVisioneer company statement, “Our passion is innovative products that people love to use. In the past we disrupted industries to do what was right. We’re gearing up to do it again.”
InVisioneer recently received a seed round of financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and while the company is being somewhat stealthy, it has released a few details about an upcoming product in an FCC filing.
The filing discusses a “QPlay” product that will connect to TV sets via HDMI, but unlike many other SMPs, it will not offer a remote control. Instead, users are supposed to use their tablet PC (specifically an iPad in the FCC filing) and use Wi-Fi to connect and communicate with the QPlay.
This type of design sounds quite similar to Google’s Chromecast, but there are some notable differences. For example, while Chromecast is generally configured to permit users to beam content to the TV screen by using a selection of third-party applications, QPlay relies on “curation” through its own dedicated app. This seems to indicate that the QPlay will offer users with iOS-based devices an app to discover, share, and watch videos. Users will then be able to make their own playlists of videos, share them with others through the service (and through Facebook and Twitter), browse the playlists of their friends, and apparently also rate playlists.
InVisioneer’s QPlay Streaming Media Player
Source: InVisioneer
While those capabilities sound nice, the main question hovering over the QPlay product description is about those “playlists” of videos. Playlists of what? Most of the industry speculation about the playlists point toward the product offering videos from services like YouTube and Vimeo, although one report notes QPlay will likely offer some premium video options such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, and possibly even Amazon.
Other details about the QPlay remain scarce. Although we’ve been digging, there’s still nothing available yet about pricing, potential shipping dates, or any solid details about content partnerships. However, there are some indications that InVisioneer may release more details about the QPlay during the Consumer Electronics Show in January, so stay tuned.
MRG Analysis
As noted earlier, the announcement of a new SMP product isn’t all that earth-shaking. What makes the QPlay interesting is the team behind the product. In addition to Ramsey and Barton from TiVo, the company reportedly has put together a team of engineers with experience at Apple, Google, and Linden Lab. This makes the QPlay worth keeping an eye on.
Still, even with an All Star team behind the product, making a significant impression on the SMP market remains difficult. While SMP unit shipments rose again at an impressive rate in 2013, the market continues to be dominated by Apple and Roku on the box-type device side, and by Chromecast on the stick/dongle side.
One thing that would truly be notable for the QPlay, or for virtually any other SMP product, would be to attract users outside of the United States. MRG currently estimates that a solid 90% of all SMP product shipments have been in the US, which means that the next-generation of products will need to appeal to a more international user base in order for the market to continue to grow.
It’s way too early to tell if the QPlay will be a success, but MRG will continue report new information about the product, and about the global streaming media player market in general, in our OTT video research service.
