A Japanese research team has announced the successful development of a new optical storage technology that could greatly increase the amount of data stored on a DVD. The technology is based on a material called titanium pentoxide. It has similar characteristics to those used to create regular DVDs, but is smaller and less expensive.
Project leader and chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo, Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, said the development was “promising as a material for a next-generation optical storage device.” A new optical storage drive based on the technology could hold 1000 times more data than today’s Blu-ray discs and 5000 times more than a regular DVD.
Ohkoshi said that the material also is less expensive than what is required to manufacture DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Titanium pentoxide costs about 1/100th as much as the rare element, germanium-antimony-tellurium needed for Blu-ray discs.
Under laser light titanium pentoxide changes from a black to brown color and is easily detectable with optical sensors. The titanium pentoxide read/write process can be conducted at normal room temperatures. The compound is “cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint,” said Ohkoshi.
Early uses may include gaming applications because some games are approaching the storage limits of standard Blu-ray discs. New 3-D applications would demand even more storage. Both Panasonic and Sony have announced plans to increase the capacity of current Blu-ray discs to 33.4GB per layer in an attempt to address the need for more disc capacity.
TV display market is hot
At the Society for Information Display conference, held in late May, DisplaySearch analysts presented good news on the display industry’s health. The company’s TV market forecast for 2010 was updated, and it now calls for an additional 10 million displays to be shipped this year, for a total of 228 million units overall. The growth is being driven, in part, by new demands for 3-D and LED televisions.
Hasakazu Torii, VP of the company’s TV marketing research department said, “The rapid transition to flat-panel technologies in emerging markets and the robust level of growth even in mature markets has led us to improve our outlook for 2010 … This is especially true for LCD TVs, which are now projected to exceed 180 million units in 2010, [which is] a 24 percent increase over 2009. This is helped by the introduction of new technologies like 3-D, as well as the expansion of newer features like LED backlights and Internet connectivity."
The new 3-D display market is expected to grow from 2.5 million 3-D enabled TVs shipped this year to 27 million TV sets shipped in 2013. The company says that by 2013, 27 percent of all sets 40in or larger will be 3-D capable. One inhibitor of 3-D set growth is that Western Europe has been slower to adopt Blu-ray technology. These players can support 3-D content.
DisplaySearch expects that almost 100 million Web-enabled TV sets will be shipped in 2013. That’s up by 546 percent when compared with 2009.
1 trillion display ads seen in Q1
According to comScore, Americans received more than 1 trillion online display ads in Q1 2010. That’s up 15 percent over the same period in 2009. Total U.S. Internet display advertising reached $2.7 billion with the average CPM of $2.48.
“Following a severe ad recession that began in late 2008 and continued through the first three quarters of 2009, we’ve been seeing a strong resurgence in the online display ad market,” said Jeff Hackett, comScore senior vice president. “The first quarter of 2010 posted strong volume in online display ads, coinciding with increasing expenditure from advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers. This pickup in activity should bode well for the online advertising industry as we move forward in 2010.”
Facebook continues to lead online publishing with 176 billion display ad impressions. That represents 16.2 market share. Yahoo! sites ranked second with 132 billion impressions and 12.1 market share. Next was Microsoft Sites with 60 billion impressions and 5.5 percent and Fox Interactive Media with 53 billion impressions and 4.9 percent market share. Google placed seventh in the ranking and Turner Network was eighth.
AT&T was the top online display advertiser with 26.3 billion impressions, accounting for 2.4 percent of display ads. Verizon was second with 21.9 billion impressions and 2 percent of the ads presented. Other top display advertisers are shown in Table 1 to the left.
TV revenue declines, Internet gains
In 2009, the total U.S. TV and online advertising market totaled $67 billion, compared with $77 billion in 2008, according to The Yankee Group. TV advertising, by far the largest portion of this combined market, was hit especially hard by reductions in spending during 2009.
The TV ad market declined 21.2 percent, from $52 billion to $41 billion, between 2008 and 2009. A shift in consumer attention from TV to the Internet primarily drove the steep decline in the TV ad market.
Internet advertising increased during 2009, with online ad revenues growing 8.3 percent between 2008, when they totaled $24 billion, and 2009, when they totaled $26 billion.
Total media consumption declines
The total amount of time per day that consumers spent with media actually declined 14.3 percent compared with 2008. Consumers spent about 14 hours per day on media in 2008, but only 12 hours per day in 2009. Much of the decline in media consumption was represented by declining TV viewership.
Americans spent an average of 197 minutes watching TV and video in 2009, compared with an average 253 minutes per day consuming online content. Average daily mobile phone use reached 78 minutes. Media consumption by category is shown in Figure 2 to the right.
