Predicting the outcome of a revolution is a fool’s game. Still, a few things are clear, even today, about the changes we are living through in the world of information, entertainment and communications.
“You could argue that the future is already here, that the factors that will determine the future are already here,” said Mr. Fenez, at PWC. “We just haven’t seen the full impact. All we can really talk about is the pace and the color of the future in different markets.”
The old centers of media creation and consumption, the United States and Europe, will feel new competition from faster-growing regions: Asia, of course, but also Latin America, Africa and others. When that happens, media content, still dominated by Western notions of what constitutes news and entertainment, will have to adapt, too.
A recent study by Cisco Systems, a provider of networking equipment, underlines the uncertainties. By 2017, it says, revenue in the media industry — defined broadly as everything from the sale of content to the provision of Internet access — could do anything from shrink slightly from the current level of just under $1 trillion to more than double. That is only four years from now.
