Highlights of thoughts from delegates
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-10-12 10:31

The following extract reflects strategic viewpoints and perspectives from the delegates to the 15th China Daily CEO Roundtable. Please log on to the CEO Roundtable website (http://ceoroundtable.chinadaily.com.cn) for full coverage:

What do you think are the most important challenges and opportunities for the development of the digital entertainment industry in China, at both consumer and industry levels?

Piet Coeleweij, senior VP and general manager, Philips Consumer Electronics of China: The pace of change in China is moving fast. The appetite for becoming connected consumers is never more apparent. So what's holding us back? It's certainly not consumers. Too often our customers tell us that technology is a burden, rather than an enabler. Our challenge is to integrate technology into the modern lifestyle creating products that are smart on the inside, yet simple on the outside. This idea is embraced in our brand promise: Sense & Simplicity.

Alastair Campbell, president, China, Thomson S.A: At the consumer level there is still a great deal of infrastructure to put in place to provide effective access to the new digital broadcast domain, and providing the most effective blend of cable, satellite and IP delivery over such a huge territory presents both technical and logistical challenges. Human resources to implement these services and technical standards to ensure quality of transmission represent critical challenges. Consumer education is also an important aspect of the transition. At the production level, new measures are needed to stimulate and finance the domestic content industry. In the feature film sector this will necessitate stronger anti-piracy measures.

Peter Weigand, chairman, Micronas Semiconductor R&D (Shanghai) Co Ltd: "The Chinese market has seen some promising steps towards digital transmission when local governments in major cities pushed the digital broadcast over the already widely available cable infrastructure and the deployment of digital set top boxes to citizens' households to receive advanced services. Unfortunately, this progress is a very fragmented one with different technology solutions in different cities. As a result, a rather low adoption rate of about 2.5 million digital cable subscribers has been registered by the end of this year, compared to more than 100 million analogue cable subscribers nationwide, according to a recent publication of iSuppli Corporation.

What should the government and the industry do to foster a better, faster and healthier development of the digital entertainment industry in China?

Patrick Whitney, Steelcase/Robert C. Pew Professor & Director, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology: "Talent development certainly is one of the key needs, and design schools need to play a key role if China is to lead in the development of digital entertainment.However, the majority of design schools in China focus on decoration. A few leading schools are developing programmes in advanced methods of design that include user-understanding. This has to be expanded to have talented designers who can design the products and design the content."

Alastair Campbell: Government and industry need to work together to promote the protection of content against unauthorized use and copying of content. Enhanced measures to ensure the security of satellite transmissions are also a priority. It may be worthwhile to consider creating a new independent authority to support and coordinate content producers and broadcasters.

China has embarked on a hugely ambitious programme to revolutionize its broadcast and film industry. The overriding concern should be to strengthen the domestic media and entertainment industry and focus on quality both of content production and distribution to benefit the maximum number of consumers.

Marc van der Chijs, co-founder of Toodou.com: A good infrastructure in China is essential. High-speed digital networks are a prerequisite . This can be done either by a network of cables or by offering wireless web access all over the city. The government could do this themselves or give incentives to corporations to offer this. More Important is that the infrastructure will be cheap enough to use for the average user, meaning low or no user fees.

(China Daily 10/12/2005 page11