The Everything (video) Store - Part 10

Consumers love convenience. For our day-to-day needs we want a nearby supermarket or an everything store like Amazon (originally a book store … with much larger ambitions). For audio Spotify is #1. For premium video, Netflix. Unfortunately for consumers today there are nearly 100 video ‘catalogs’. No one wants to go to 100 stores (or 1,000 channels) to find what they are looking for.??

Google, Amazon and Apple have a solution for you. Buy everything through us. They are using their platform monopolies to force media companies to pay them huge fees to sell anything, even streaming media, on their platforms. How can anyone compete on platforms owned, regulated and heavily taxed by their far larger competitors?

Media companies have begun to raise antitrust concerns - to force the platforms to let them create competitive digital stores. Once the key platforms are pried open, every major player will need their own media superstore, with as much content as possible. Then expect endless acquisitions, mergers and partnerships, to stock these stores. Roku ($12b), Vizio ($2B), Xperi ($.5B), Plex ($.2B) or Vidaa will become attractive acquisition targets to extend these stores beyond phones and PCs to TVs. As a side benefit, only the hardware manufacturer gets all the data about the user, which they can use to make ads more valuable.

Next: Part 11 - 2025+: A super-app for video