MUMBAI: Worldwide broadband households will more than double between 2005 and 2010, growing from about 194 million in 2005 to more than 413 million by 2010.

Market research firm In-Stat notes that of all broadband households today, 12.8 per cent are already regularly viewing professional content via online content aggregators.

Traditional broadcast TV networks are finally figuring out that they need to capitalise on “all this personalization stuff” or they will have deep trouble ahead.

The Pay-TV services have realised that personalisation is the trend for the future, and they won’t be left behind while TV keeps expanding onto the Internet.

Although online content aggregators are in the early experimentation stages of rolling out video services, they will have some dramatic revenue-generating opportunities in the next five year. The worldwide market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010, the high-tech market research firm says.

In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold says, “AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple, major broadcast TV networks, Pay-TV services and local TV stations are all working on ways to blend their video assets with personalised TV services.

“The future of television is slowly being defined online, where the big Internet portals are finding ways to blend professional video with their high-touch services that follow consumers from screen to screen during the course of a typical day.”

Although there has been much hype about multimedia home networks, low-cost portable storage devices that can move content throughout the home via sneakernet may win the favour of consumers because luggable media provides low-cost, high availability and convenience.