Big question still remains - will Sky ditch NEON and adopt Lightbox? Or keep NEON and ditch Lightbox? Or something else?
My feeling is they will keep NEON because they would have already spent a fair bit of dosh making upgrades (yet to be released).
Personally, I would like to see a supercharged NEON with changes that include:
- Rebranding. Call it Sky NOW or something (Steve Bayliss will have some great ideas, I just think they need to include the word 'Sky' in there somewhere to reinforce brand awareness).
- long overdue UX improvements. The app has great content but very poor usability compared to Netflix.
- PPV movies. Unlike the current version of Lightbox, the new service needs to allow in-app purchases to make it as easy as possible for the consumer.
- ability for users to select add-ons for additional content. This would require negotiation with the content providers, however it would be awesome if customers had the opportunity to add content from The History Channel (just one example) for an additional fee per month. This could help increase ARPU.
The other thing to consider is that Sky may introduce a new offering whereby you can subscribe to Sky GO as a standalone. That would allow them to offer cheaper content bundles than satellite customers get (No $15-$20 per month MySky fees, plus the bundles could theoretically be made cheaper as there are no satellite transmission fees to cover).
And finally, Martin has been looking at opportunities to enter the broadband market as a way of diversifying revenue. There are pros and cons to this move, and it will be interesting to learn more about this.
Looking forward to the next lot of results on 12 Feb.
