Videotron rolls out Apple watch app for TV customers

MONTREAL — Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron has launched a new app for Apple Inc.’s smartwatch that the company hopes will increase discoverability of channels available though its cable packages and appeal to early tech adopters. The app, called “Illico for Apple watch,” allows the users to shuffle through TV channels by choosing a category, such as children’s programming, sports or music. The app then communicates with the set-top box to cycle through all the channels that fall in that category. That function works only with live channels, but the app can also be used to fast forward, rewind or pause both live and on-demand programming, Videotron said. The app works with the newest generation of set-top boxes provided by the company. In an interview following a launch event with media on Monday, Jean-Pierre Gauvin, Videotron’s senior director of planning and development, said the company wanted to provide customers with a new way to discover content. He said the app, the first Apple Watch app to be launched by a Canadian TV provider, is aimed at tech-savvy customers who are the early adopters of smartwatch technology and will provide them with a new way to channel surf. When viewers use the program guide, they tend to get used to watching the same five or 10 channels, he added, noting that “most of our customers subscribe to more than five or 10 channels, so how can we provide a new tool to discover what you would not see otherwise?” The app was inspired by the shuffle feature that’s common in digital music players and apps, he said. Gauvin said it was important for the company to launch the app, despite a lack of demand for such a feature from customers, because “it’s a new category of device. Therefore we need to get there to learn and grow, as this new category of device hopefully will succeed. So if you’re not there, you miss the opportunity to learn and to get feedback from the users.” He added that using the traditional program guide and waiting for a show to come on is “less of a habit for this younger generation.” “I think young people are expecting a new way to discover content,” he said. Gauvin said the company would like to add more functionality to the app, such as the ability to control the set-top box, and perhaps more “features that personalize your experience.” Duncan Stewart, research director for technology, media and telecommunications for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. in Canada, noted in an email that not a lot of people have Apple Watches yet. Apple launched the device in Canada a month ago. “Until we see whether smartwatches in general become mass market devices," Stewart noted, “it is pretty tough to know if this is a necessary strategy for content discovery.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Videotron rolls out Apple watch app for TV customers

Broadcast | May 25, 2015

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Videotron rolls out Apple watch app for TV customers

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