Since the death of one Steve Jobs and release of the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson rumors have been spreading like wildfire about a new television to be released by Apple sometime in 2012.

In this book, Isaacson quotes Steve Jobs: ‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told Isaacson. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’

So what will this be?
Personally I think you only have to look at the iPad or iPhone to understand where this may go and I think I might have some ideas on this. If you look at televisions today they are the slave to the incumbent lazy broadcasters and cable providers, basically every TV has a receiver that scans for channels and if you have cable it works a little the same albeit with a set top box. Nothing has changed for decades and TV manufacturers are stuck in loop of releasing the same tired systems and upgrading them with silly things like hacked on 3D (does anyone seriously think the whole family wearing 3D glasses would catch on?)

I think when Apple releases the new television it will revolutionize the industry and force TV networks, cable suppliers and television manufacturers to change the way we receive our channels, much like music producers were forced kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Channels as Apps
I think it will work like this, you buy the Apple television and it comes with all the free to air TV apps (think channels as Apps), you download an app (channel) and that is included in your lineup, each app (ABC as an example) has a list of shows that are regularly updated that you can subscribe to and add to your list of shows to watch when you want to watch them. You simply ignore the ones you do not want and they do not appear in your lineup. Newly released (upcoming) shows are showcased on your TV Dashboard.

Accounts
A family may have multiple accounts for different family members (restrictions included) and each login displays a different lineup on the TV Dashboard. This will allow owners to filter access for different users within their family.

Subscription Style Apps
Just like you pay for subscriptions to your favorite magazine and now some apps, you pay for subscriptions for TV/cable style channels, as an example Fox Sports may cost $4.95 per month and you will receive notifications of any Pay per View events from that channel.

iTunes
I think everything will be in iTunes and you will be able to sync watch this across multiple devices such as your iPad, iPhone, iMac, Laptop etc.

The Cloud
Everything will be stored in the cloud, so you take your TV with you on the road or in your hotel, by having everything stored in the cloud access is just a few clicks away.

Location Based Advertising
I have written about this multiple times in the past, but location based advertising is the only thing that will save free to air TV networks and will be a worldwide trillion dollar industry. This will mean if you live in Queens/New York you will not only see national chains advertising on your channels, but also local pizza stores, cafeterias, nightlife and local tourism operators, finally giving the networks access to small business again (watch TV now and advertising is almost entirely from the big boys).

Advertisers
Advertisers will be able to login and see what space is available to advertise their products and services in there own area or areas, they will be able to create ads using web based systems and ad templates and book spots, pay for commercials by credit card and Apple takes a chunk and distributes the rest back to the networks. It would almost make an ad agency/ buying group cry.

Open
I also think this will create a wave of new Tv shows, basically anyone can create a channel and obviously the success of these will depend on subscribers and social word of mouth, but how exciting would this be? Local realtors could create a channel on their local market, local tourism operators could create channels on local areas and attract their own advertisers, you create a channel that becomes popular and advertisers will follow.

Summary
I know this is fairly well departed from anything I have seen written on the web, but I truly think that this model would work if it had the power of Apple, then perhaps Google as a competitor behind it. Current free to air TV networks would get a lifeline – even though I think they are the last ones to deserve this and it would open up a world of opportunities for the little guys.

Then the only thing left for Apple to conquer would be the car stereo and you would easily see how they could change this tomorrow.

Your thoughts?

All sounds very similar to YouTube right? It is, except you can purchase a VidCall number (USD29 per annum) that you advertise and provide to your audience. With this number your audience can dial it into either of the phone applications and your content will appear. There’s no cost to your audience because the number is not dialed, its simply used as a search tool to pull your content through the internet.

It’s always great to see innovation, especially in the online video segment as this is one of the most popular and fastest growing. However, VidCall are basically competing with Youtube and trying to charge a fee for this. Can they successfully do this? Perhaps, but you need to remember that users can market their  YouTube channel @DoubleBayProperty for free.

Also, there should be a mobile phone website so any phone browser with internet access can view content eg m.youtube.com not just those with an iPhone or Android phone.

“aTV will provide the demonstration of key functions in the property management industry.”

The premise with aTV has been built around 100 questions the legislation and software can not teach or answer for a property manager.

Watch Video

aTV plan to keep the videos very short and intend to present a lot more insights along the way.

Membership to the apmasphere site is free & aTV is the latest in their long list of FREE resources for property managers to help them with their careers.

As a member, I’ve found that apmasphere provide an invaluable resource for Property Managers & Principals, with some of the industries best Property Managers & Property Management trainers providing guidance, thoughts and ideas on how to overcome many of the daily issues Property Management departments & Principals face.

Apmasphere has in excess of 1,000 members & provides some of the most up-to-date information available for Property Managers. Their forum acts like a brains trust for ideas on the ‘How To’ of Property Management and approaches questions on economics, structure and growth.

If you haven’t joined in as yet, you may want to head over to see what you’re missing out on. It’s a great online learning platform.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has scrapped the broadband tender process in favour of forming a public/private company to build and operate a massive broadband fibre to the home network which will cost over AU 40 billion dollars. And I love it! As long as Telstra has absolutely no control over it!

Ivor Ries, an analyst with EL and C Baillieu Stockbroking thinks that few will pay the premium price for this service and that we do not need the kind of speeds (100 megabytes a second) that this proposal provides. He is not alone, many analysts feel the same way. Currently the average Australian home pays around $40 per month for broadband (add line rental etc) with very limited download caps. The new broadband offering will more than likely come in at around $70 per month.

Most of these analysts do not really understand the way these things work. Yes on the surface $70 per month is too way much, but think of no line rental – as this proposal is fibre to the home and business not node. Also think of additional services, no download caps, local and national calls included and you start to see things differently. Many companies will also create their own long range wireless networks (WIMAX) allowing them to offer broadband within a 20km radius of their business to their staff and executives.

The private sector will come to the party with additional offerings and we will no longer be held to ransom by Telstra which costs Australian billions of dollars a year in additional unnecessary charges, just because they can.

Think about a broadband telco and the future offerings – we will call our new company Onetel. Onetel will offer:

• 100 Megabytes per second download speeds
• Unlimited Downloads
• Unlimited Local and National Calls
• No Line Rental
• 50 TV Channels + ability for users to create and share their own local and community TV channels

All of the sudden the price sounds a lot more attractive. The dumping of line rental fees will save Australians billions of dollars per year and innovation will allow us to do so much more at 100 megabytes per second speeds.

Think of real estate video, IPTV (Internet TV) and video streaming becoming common place and portals becoming conduits for a wide range of data and services.

History also tells us that download speeds will continue to rise as innovation squeezes more and more out of fibre broadband, current ADSL2 comes in at 24 megabytes a second, from a start of around 256k.

If the 100 megabytes comes in at a maximum over the same period we could expect at least 1 gigabyte a second out of this fibre within 10 years. It also means companies such as Fairfax, News Ltd, for that matter any company can also get involved.

On Thursday evening I had a phone hookup with Simon Baker, former Managing Director of Realestate.com.au. We spoke about a range of issues and I will place some excerpts from the interview here. Simon recently departed from Realestate.com.au in the typical pathetic fashion that large organisations feel necessary and from his blog My CEO Life Simon explained his departure.

“I was summonded to a hotel room in town, asked for my access pass and told not to go back to the office and that my desk would be packed up and couriered to me – 7.5 years over in a flash. I was not to say goodbye to the team.”

Since that date Simon has been inundated with offers and judging by the response was very popular amongst his team. Simon is still a large shareholder of realestate.com.au so I am sure he will want to see continued growth from this company. You have got to give credit where it is due, the company now has a market capitalisation of over 500 million and employs some 750 people.

Realestate.com.au has a number of challenges ahead of them, not only trying to keep growth running along nicely, but also making its international businesses profitable (nearly all the profit comes from Australia).

There was no malice in this interview towards REA and he answered all questions openly.

So here is the interview.

It has been a dramatic few weeks, can you share with us some of your thoughts over the past few weeks, what have you been up to?

“Well I have had over 20 opportunities present themselves over the since the announcement. Anything from board positions, investment opportunities and of course some serious offers which I am taking my time mulling over, it has to fit.” Simon is also involved in a number of early stage companies and has investments in a number of these, from real estate to arts. Simon is currently Chairman and CEO of Artshub, a Director of Redbubble and a Director of 3eep. Simon seems to have a passion for the arts and you can see this from his investments, ArtsBub looks like a little ripper.

Where do you see yourself working, do you think you will remain in the online space in real estate or just general technology?

“Well it will have to be on the Internet, I am not interested in anything non internet related, I couldn’t cope with it.” So I am weighing up some opportunities and will make a decision in due course, but I have had a plethora of interest both in and around the real estate space.”

Realestate.com.au saw incredible growth over the past few years. Is this going to continue, or do you think it will be tough to continue at around 40% growth? We all have been waiting for Google Classifieds (Google Real Estate) to come to Australia. Do you see this as a threat to current revenue models?

“No”. Simon recently had a chat with Abe Murray Product Manager at Google and pointed out that Google are not in the business of taking down markets, more so complimenting them.

“Only around 30% of traffic comes from Google, Realestate.com.au is now part of everyday life for consumers, the real challenge is for off-line print media, realestate.com.au drives leads for agents, this is what we do, currently in Australia around 15% of marketing is spent online compared with 85% in newspapers, yet newspapers struggle with around 20% of leads. Naturally agents will just get smarter where they spend there money.”

Will the Portals embrace Google?

“Portals will embrace Google, they will be crazy not to”. Simon also spoke of the challenge for Google if realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, realestateview.com.au, myhome.com.au all send the same properties and perhaps also agents sent feeds to Google as well. We did disagree on some aspects of this, as I did point out that Google will be smart enough to filter these or link to all sources. Simon does however feel that Google will not be a threat, he thinks they will compliment the portals.

Newspapers have been struggling with print property guides, seeing revenues fall over the past few years. Can you ever see them give up, like the LA Times has done recently?

“I don’t think they will give up, agents will use newspapers more for branding and perhaps only high quality properties will be featured in papers – maybe 1.5 million dollar properties.” I agreed with Simon on this. I mentioned that it may well start at around $600,000 but more and more consumers will not want advertising in newspapers and each year the benchmark will increase, lower priced properties, especially in times where many may be getting less than what they paid for properties and will not want to spend money in print.

Do you think print and online departments should merge?

“No”. Many have speculated that this is where Simon and the Board had the base of their disagreement. I think the ‘no’ was a great answer, short and sweet. It is also speculated that Fairfax Digital and Print are also having the same bunfight.

Where do you see real estate in 5 years? Do you think Mobile is the answer or do you think digital television is the next big area?

“I think it will be via the browser, whether it is video or not, the mobile market here in Australia is different to some countries where there are so many more options and everyday uses for mobile phones – maybe an integrated TV browser”.

If you had to name one thing you could be proud of in your time at REA what would it be?

“Created a household name”. Simon struggled to name just one. He also spoke of his time coming into a company on its knees and systematically building it up with a great passionate team and taking it international.

Simon was leaving on a flight overseas tomorrow, so I thanked him for his time and wished him luck. I think we will see him somewhere building a smallish company up, more than likely in the real estate space. He does have a passion outside of real estate, but real estate is where he has all of the connections and a great reputation, he understands the market internationally, so I think that will be where we see his more prominent roles.

If you get a chance take a look at his MyCEO Blog it has some great articles and insights into his life as a CEO and also some good commentary on his departure.

Firstly we will take a look at the giant of Real Estate in Australia realestate.com.au.

Overview: Without doubt the leader in most regions of Australia. Will continue sit around the 3.5 – 4 million mark in visitor numbers. REA will struggle to grow this number in Australia because let’s be honest how much more room is there for growth? REA has a number of problems. To begin with REA are the best at what they do and all large media companies love the marketing spend of real estate agents, so they will never be left alone to sit and count the cash.

Another problem is that in the next 12 months we will see large new entrants such as Google, Yahoo and MSN enter with their FREE classifieds websites. REA will continue to be aggressive in international acquisitions and will look to see its revenue base expand as it continues to make purchases in weak competitive markets.

As for the current website it is getting a little long in the tooth and REA will no doubt look to launch a new site soon. They will also need to forge closer ties with agents and make them feel that they are pulling together in the same direction, this sometimes means dropping the tough stance on fees and being a little more flexible. The new site will really need a stronger clearer focus on agents property listings rather than 3rd party advertising. The company will also struggle in the long term to lift revenues from agents as competition will drive down annual fees significantly into the future. The site still performs day in and day out and with more than triple the daily unique browsers of its nearest competitor will see it reign at the top for quite some time.

Threats: Fairfax (Domain.com.au) has now Rural Press in its bed and with the Macquarie Media going top to tail – REA will have its hands full keeping an eye on its local business whilst pushing to grow internationally. Google, Yahoo (maybe partner with News Ltd in talks) and MSN are all looming large with their FREE classifieds offerings and this will have a long term impact on annual agents revenues.

This creates another problem for REA. Once the FREE classifieds sites come online will also have to be very careful about intrusive 3rd party advertising as Google, Yahoo and MSN classifieds websites have a very clean and unobtrusive advertising model that has a strong connection with site users. Google Base will be the main problem once they launch here in Australia because Google will also include its classifieds listings in search results meaning consumers can get this property information from the search engine without having to go to another website. MyHome has had no impact whatsoever on REA and I doubt they have the know how and mettle to make a challenge in the short term. However MyHome cannot be discounted in the long term IF they stay the course and admit to – and fix the current site.

REA recently integrated/added the Home Renovation section to their website and it has an impressive array of articles and hints and tips for home buyers and renovators. This will no doubt bring in more advertising revenues and has been a great addition.

Future: REA will eventually do a deal with MySpace (which will carry REA listings much like Facebook now do) and possibly Yahoo if Rupert gets his way. They will continue international purchases and growth of many of these fledgling companies and I see real potential here for them. They have already seen impressive growth in New Zealand and the UK and will continue to push heavily in these areas. Will still be at the top in 3 years but its lead will dwindle and their agents revenues short term will stagnate and then fall dramatically once the free classifieds sites start to bring agents results. All in all I think the international future is bright, but Simon Baker and his team will have their work cut out for them to stave of competition from rivals even his hip pockets and visitor numbers cannot match. I see a Digital TV station (IPTV) feeding data to lounge rooms and possibly a TV show on a rival network to Nine.

Links:
www.realestate.com.au
www.domain.com.au
www.yahooclassifieds.com
www.liveexpo.com
www.googlebase.com
www.facebook.com
www.myhome.com.au

Why?
Having Telstra owning the network has been a disaster for consumers, it slows down the rate of change and has hurt consumers more than any share price drop. Just take a look at some figures:

In the US for $20 USD per month you get all local and national calls, calls to Canada and calls to many European countries, yes that is $20 per month, below $30 AUD . Now we pay more for just a line rental. Now I have been renting a telephone line from my property to the street for 20 years, surely this is just a rip off. I pay $36 per month just for line rental.

256 kb downloads speeds is not broadband but an absolute joke, 512 kb downloads is the same, we will look back and laugh at these speeds in just 5 years.

I switched from Telstra for my broadband 12 months ago, why? Because I could get five times the bandwidth and 15 times the speed from iiNet for less than what it cost me from Telstra.

Telstra only introduced ADSL 2+ once it started losing clients. You can have as many spiffy ads telling us that 256k is lightning fast broadband but consumers will wise up eventually.

To me the term ‘Broadband’ is a minimum of 12 megabytes per second and ADSL 2+ can take us above 20 megabytes per second. Having Telstra build and control access to a national fibre to the node network will just mean slower speeds, weaker service and higher prices and this is why Labor’s promise to build a fibre to the node network is good for consumers.

It will allow all of the other carriers equal access and will bring down prices because that is what competition does. Now some may argue that Telstra will still own the last mile to the home. Who cares? In the next 24 months we will see WiMAX hit the streets and every new PC made with an Intel and AMD chip will have the chip built in. So there goes any need for that last mile from Telstra.

WiMAX allows for wireless broadband up to 50 kilometres from the antenna, it will also allow relaying which means it will be cheaper for rural areas and can reach speeds of up to 100 megabytes a second, although this does drain the further away you get from it, but remember, in the early days of the Internet we used to get 9kb a second, then 14kb, then 36 and now 56kb all from the lousy modem.

Telstra has made it clear it will not build a network if it has to give access to competition at regulated prices, which basically means it wants to dictate to all other providers the price they can get access for – and in turn what we must pay, yeah that will work! We only have to go back a few years and Telstra was charging competitors wholesale prices that were higher than their own retail prices. So again I do not trust them to do the right things by the consumer one little bit.

I would like to see the Liberal Party jump on board and support building our own network, because it will be a good money spinner for the government instead of trying to scare everyone concerning the Labor plan, I watched Peter Costello’s tirade in Parliament about raiding the future fund, it was pretty funny really and I think he thought he had them, unfortunately for him just about every media company in Australia agrees with Labor..

As I have said before, big business in Australia, the current market leaders – are not given a born right to rule our wallets forever, the market should dictate this by the product and services they provide – not because they have always been successful.

Yes we have monopolies everywhere, roads, banks gaming and television (to name but a few) but this is one area that the monopoly must end for the good of all Australians. Next to marketing and rent, telephone and Internet costs are the biggest many small businesses face and it is time we paid a reasonable price for a reasonable product.

Now before you think I am a member of the Labor Party I am not, in fact I don’t think I have voted Labor since Keating, but I can tell you now, I want some changes and I do not want Telstra owning a fibre network that they can dominate.

End of Rant….

The style and navigation cannot really change too much, but I do hope the focus is on property listings and not advertising – this will be a huge test for a company that receives most of its income from advertisers and one which time and time again major media companies fail to do (and this includes all current portals)

Domain.com.au is the closest to getting it right, but perhaps this is more to do with the fact that more people want to advertise on the number one site realestate.com.au – which is so heavily laden on every page with advertising.

My focus will be on ease of use and the layout of information, which I think no real estate portal has got right just yet.
DIFFERENCE
Not one bit as far as vendors listing data – this is because they will be receiving the same data that all of the major portals like realestate.com.au receive from the major franchises – so do not look for any difference whatsoever here – especially since they are rushing to market. This is important because all major franchises already have systems in place to send data to the real estate portals and they are not about to invest money to change the structure of this data, not yet anyway!
It is the layout of this data that will be important.

I think they will use the Microsoft Mapping Service and this could be a very interesting addition – if done correctly, which no-one has done well at all so far – but it is early days with mapping and I expect all offerings to continually improve.

I think the site will be in a wider format, such as 1024 pixel width, which domain.com.au comes close to. However realestate.com.au is still working in 800 pixel width for the less than 20% of people that have small monitors.

There is nothing wrong with 800 pixel width but I believe 80% of the population should not have to suffer for the 20% that do not have monitors less than 5 years of age.

THE WINNING EDGE?
So how can they win? A Digital TV Real Estate Channel! One where member agents can upload listings (movies, photos and text data) and viewers can search (subscribe even) and view movies/photos and text information of selected properties in the comfort on their couch in front of their TV at home.

Or maybe IPTV (TV over the Internet) will do this and I am sure realestate.com.au/domain.com.au are looking into this already. IPTV whilst impressive on paper is yet to set the world on fire but it shows promise.

Imagine coming home from work and simply clicking a button to have all the latest listings (sent via your options) appear any time you wish!

Now that beats sifting through magazines and even sitting in front of a computer. The biggest warning I can give anyone, is do not think for one second PBL will simply enter the market and be a lame duck, they will already have plans, perhaps not as lofty as mine, but they will have plans!

PBL through Channel Nine has experience in this medium and with the Internet, Television and Magazines, they can form a lethal combination.

The big end of town (PBL, News Ltd, Rural Press, Seven) are either planning to get bigger or are buying into other stocks so that no-one else can compete against them.

The government’s laws will need to be tightened and any calls for the regulation of Internet TV need to be thrown out the door.

Almost all of the press in the past year since the government announced changes to the laws have focussed on what the big end of town think about the changes, some are now happy and some are now upset at the new laws. Does this ring alarm bells for anyone else?

I personally have nothing against big companies getting bigger, but when there are laws in place to protect these companies I cannot help but be angry.

A free market economy should allow anyone to compete against anyone, yes you must protect consumers to ensure diversity, but we have 2 major city/metropolitan players in newspapers, 3 major players in free to air television and only one player in Pay TV.

So something has to give…..this is simply not diversity.

The ACCC has said it will not allow any consolidation in the newspapers/television/radio space, but when these companies can buy large chunks of shares in rivals – simply to control who can buy what, is bordering on the ridiculous……

Everything, including the PBL split, is about………you guessed it, control + money……………and who pays………..again, very good – the consumer!

So tell me, your views on the Media Ownership Laws!

This real estate portal was originally setup by LJ Hooker, Ray White, Century 21, Elders and some other franchise firms.

With the FPC purchase, Homehound will have overcome one of their long time problem and that is hardly anyone has ever heard of them.

With FPC and their Inner Sydney newspaper guide Home Hound they can give this site the exposure it needs.

The Portal should however focus on this region and forget about trying to be a national guide.

The hardest thing about running a real estate portal is giving it the exposure it needs and the best way to do this is by search engine marketing. However agents still do not understand how important search engine marketing is – and how cost effective it is compared to print and television marketing (forget about radio).

This is why you have to put it into newspapers and on TV- not because it is effective but it is the only way you can put it in front of agents faces and therefore get them to join.

The rise of these regional type portals is going to place some pressure on the big real estate sites such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, these are owned by major media companies. The fact is there is no reason why big media companies must own the Internet advertising space and with careful planning, smart marketing, well just about anyone can be a threat to them. The problem is any threat can be bought for a price and the majors have the dollars to do this. Just think about the ridiculous money realestate.com.au paid for a handful of clients from lowly competitor property.com.au (9 Million big ones).

The Real Estate Industry can look at the rise of regional portals in two ways. One is that it will create real competition in the certain areas and place some downward pressure on print media advertising, which should be welcomed.

The rise of these sites and newspaper guides will create headaches for many agents. However I think it is important that agents think seriously about joining these sites because the last thing they want is for the major media players to completely dominate the market and therefore continually rise their prices (which they are very good at).

I will still say however that agents own personal websites are their most important asset for the future. The more they invest now, the better placed they are going to be in the future.