The Support for Higher Level DRM Is Now a Must for All Smartphone Vendors

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4Q 2018 | IN-5281

Xiaomi’s Poco F1 sold out in less than 5 minutes during its first sale in India, thanks to its incredible specifications at a price of just USD$300. However, the Poco F1 only supports Google’s Level 3 Widevine DRM, which means users are not able to stream High-Definition (HD) content on video services like Netflix, Google Play Movies, and Amazon Prime Video. Instead, these services rely on Level 1 Widevine DRM for content protection, a higher tier security level commonly supported by most flagship Android mobile devices. Poco F1’s inability to support HD content from these streaming services led to mixed feedbacks and might hurt its future sales. With India’s burgeoning Over-the-Top (OTT) market due to cheaper data plans and mobile devices, Poco F1 could face an increasing disadvantage in the era of video consumption via digital media.

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Xiaomi Poco F1 Trapped in Digital Rights Management

NEWS


Xiaomi’s Poco F1 sold out in less than 5 minutes during its first sale in India, thanks to its incredible specifications at a price of just USD$300. However, the Poco F1 only supports Google’s Level 3 Widevine DRM, which means users are not able to stream High-Definition (HD) content on video services like Netflix, Google Play Movies, and Amazon Prime Video. Instead, these services rely on Level 1 Widevine DRM for content protection, a higher tier security level commonly supported by most flagship Android mobile devices.

Poco F1’s inability to support HD content from these streaming services led to mixed feedbacks and might hurt its future sales. With India’s burgeoning Over-the-Top (OTT) market due to cheaper data plans and mobile devices, Poco F1 could face an increasing disadvantage in the era of video consumption via digital media.

The Growth of OTT Necessitates Digital Rights Management on Smartphones

IMPACT


The global OTT video content market is expanding rapidly, driving the need for Digital Rights Management (DRM) content protection technologies. ABI Research forecasts the worldwide OTT subscriber base will grow at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9% to 537 million in 2022.Asia-Pacific is the region with the highest OTT subscriber base, contributing 45% of the worldwide subscriber base. (For more information, please read the ABI Research’s report Service Provider OTT Services and Set-Top Boxes Update (PT-2160).)

Among the different business models of OTT, Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) further drives online video growth. As of July 2018, Netflix,one of the key players in the SVoD market, had attained 130 million subscribers with an average increase of 5% quarterly during the past 2 years. SVoD’s two-way communication technology enables the enforcement of security mechanisms at the network level, rather than using Set-Top Box hardware, so DRM becomes a feasible and convenient solution. DRM is a content protection mechanism used in an unmanaged video distribution network. DRM has evolved from the protection of primarily file-based content to supporting video that is streamed on demand using a variety of Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) protocols over the Internet. DRM has been sufficiently agile to provide massive content protection coverage for multi-screen, multi-device OTT content.

In some devices, the DRM functions are part of the device Operating System (OS); in others, they are part of a downloadable app. For example, Windows Vista, which is for use on desktops, laptops, and tablet Personal Computers (PCs), contains a DRM system. Device manufacturers should ensure the compatibility of key DRM technologies with popular mobile applications during the manufacturing process. DRM suppliers, such as Google Widevine and Apple FairPlay, require integration partners to support their services. There are no licensing fees imposed for the integration of Widevine DRM’s solution, so there is no additional cost for the Poco F1. The manufacturer needs to undergo a certification process, which might delay the launch time. However, the downside of not supporting higher levels of DRM could make mobile devices seem inadequate and might even hinder the sales of a high-quality device.

More Opportunities for the Dynamic DRM Market Segment

RECOMMENDATIONS


Content owners (e.g., Warner Bros and Walt Disney Studios) and service providers (e.g., Sky and Dish) have been required to take robust steps to ensure the security of content being delivered to consumers, while continuously innovating user-friendly and interactive service features. Adobe, with its Flash/Access/PrimeTime solutions, Microsoft with its Windows Media DRM/Silverlight/PlayReady solutions, and Google with its Widevine solutions are technically present in the DRM market, but their solutions cater to their own downstream content products and do not engage with the wider video streaming/distribution market required for more customizable solutions, or they do not want to be locked into their ecosystems. For these DRM suppliers, their provision of DRM technology may serve different purposes. It could be to maintain exclusiveness of the brand by limiting usage within its own ecosystem, or it could be to help integrate with more platforms, enabling the delivery of content to more audiences without changing DRM solutions. Ultimately, these DRM suppliers have to ensure maximum security for their DRM technologies.

As delivery technology, broadband capacity, consumer devices, and the format of compressed digital files evolve over time, so has the business threat to commercial service providers from illegitimate or pirate alternatives. Innovative and responsive content protection vendors are an essential counter to these threats. Packaging and encoding capabilities, as well as scalability and agility would be the added value to clients. DRM vendors have to be able to support multiple DRM technologies in order to protect content of multiple platforms and devices, as different platforms require different encoding capabilities and suitability.

Vendors have differentiated themselves in targeted markets and technologies. Some vendors like Inside Secure position themselves as providers of customized content protection DRM solutions. Some vendors opt to specialize in a market that they have an expertise in, such as Verimatrix, which leverages its experience in pay TV security solutions to provide content protections for operators transiting from legacy networks to Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). There might be potential markets that have yet to be explored, such as multi-mobile device content protection, mobile application-based content protection, and data protection in the data analytics and artificial intelligence scene for tackling privacy concerns.