Andrew Walmsley on digital: Digital revolution knows no boundaries

village crashing in.

Islanders who have spent their lives getting the papers a day late now
have Facebook profiles. They are downloading episodes of Lost. They are
video-conferencing on Skype. They are more online than we are. Their
media world has changed beyond recognition, and it has not been a
gradual process.

It was a reminder of what we've been through over the past 10 years, as
email, instant messenger, online shopping, Google, eBay and iPlayer have
reshaped our access to information, to media and to each other.

But it was also a reminder that this change continues unabated in
markets like the UK just as less developed countries catch up.

Last week's Washington Post carried an interview with Steve Ballmer,
Microsoft's ever ebullient chief executive, who predicted that by 2018,
all media would be delivered via the internet. 'There will be no
newspapers and no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything
will be delivered in an electronic form,' he said.

Of course, we can all see why Microsoft would like it to be so, but the
question is how realistic this is.

Already, cinema is transitioning to digital, fundamentally changing the
distribution economics of the medium and enabling more choice in
cinemas, as well as altering the way advertising can be delivered and
targeted.

Internet radio has been around for years, but, ironically, it is
wireless that is causing a new surge in popularity as portable internet
radios that connect through a domestic Wi-Fi network become common.

Viacom is wiring the London Underground for digital ads, launching
cross-track projection later this year, and anyone who has ever visited
Japan will have seen the explosion in huge digital billboards there.

However, print and TV offer the biggest prizes. Ballmer complains that
television is insufficiently interactive, and fails to offer
sufficiently personalised content - he would like to watch his
high-school football matches from back in Detroit, for example, and, he
knows they are videoed, but he'd love to watch them online.

The internet is raising the bar; changing consumers' expectations of
what other media will deliver. In time, it will be consumer demand, not
technological change, that will make TV an internet-delivered medium.
Technology is the enabler, but it will be consumers who decide - and no
matter what the current establishment might hope for, TV will be a
massively more attractive medium when consumers can control their
consumption, as PVRs show.

Which leaves print. While the convenience and resilience of paper will
ensure it is around for some time, the economics of printing relies on
volume. As electronic media eat away at that volume, offering up-to-date
news, searchability and multimedia, there will come a tipping point
where paper simply becomes uneconomic.

Even on a small Greek island, the media world now is almost
unrecognisable from 10 years ago. As Ballmer cautions, it's not really
important whether digital will dominate in eight, 10 or 14 years - the
point is that it is inexorably replacing other media as the means of
distribution. And that process isn't slowing down, it is
accelerating.

30 SECONDS ON ... STEVE BALLMER

- Steven Anthony Ballmer was born in 1956 and has been chief executive
of Microsoft since January 2000.

- Ballmer graduated from Harvard University in 1977 with a bachelor's
degree in mathematics and economics and lived down the hall from Bill
Gates.

- He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at
Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey Immelt, now
chief executive of General Electric.

- Since joining Microsoft in 1980, Ballmer has led several divisions,
including sales and support.

- He was ranked the 43rd richest person in the world in this year's
Forbes list of the World's Richest People, with an estimated wealth of
$15bn (£7.7bn).

- Clips of Ballmer's flamboyant stage appearances at Microsoft events
have been circulated on the web. 'Dance Monkeyboy' features Ballmer
sprinting and hopping around while screeching and screaming for 45
seconds.