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Rapidtvnews.com is reporting that the BBC wasn’t overly positive about Apple’s stance to DRM, during a talk about the success of iPlayer recently. Incidentally, the Beeb also rolled out some BIG numbers about iPlayer usage…:
“Huggers supplied some impressive statistics showing how growth had doubled over the past nine months, from a January monthly total downloads of 11.2m to September’s 22.8m (daily growing from 361,000 to 759,000 over the same period)”
The BBC’s iPlayer traffic is coming 85% from Windows-enabled PCs, 10% from Macs, 1% each from Linus and Wii devices, and 3% from iPhone Touch.
IPlayer is also extending the BBC’s prime time well into the late night hours with highest traffic taking place during the 9pm-midnight period. Data also showed that usage was high during office hours. “This represents a fantastic opportunity to hang on to prime time,” said Huggers. There have been more than 250m streams or downloads generated since launch, with 56m taking place on the BBC service offered to Virgin Media users (who can play the system out on their TV sets).
“We believe that on-demand is absolutely in addition to the normal linear transmission,” said Huggers. Usage pattern is highest (43%) in the 35-54 age range, 37% in the 15-34 range, and a still impressive 21% in the 55+ group. Huggers said the BBC’s priorities included “absolutely betting on the internet.”
Anyway… back to iPlayer, and the iPhone (& iPod Touch) – apparently a team from the Beeb visited Apple and discussed the whole matter of DOWNLOAD and the iPhone – the issue to-date having been of course that Apple won’t licence their Fairplay DRM to anyone, and so without passing the content through iTunes, it’s not possible to protect premium content on the devices. The Beeb are keen to have download for the iPhone/Touch, much as they have done with the N96, but Apple ain’t budging on this whole DRM licensing thing!
It’s a shame, because having played with the iPlayer interface on various platforms, the iPhone is right up there with the best of ‘em. So it’s going continue to be streaming only for the moment I’m afraid 
[Via: Rapidtvnews.com]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
