Forrester numbers on podcasting

From Charlene Li at Forrester:

I realized that I hadn't written about Forrester's podcasting forecast. It makes a little appearance in The Future Of Digital Audio report that my colleague, Ted Schadler wrote in March (available to clients only). He looks at podcasting as a "time-shifted audio experience" with adoption driven by a combination of broadband penetration and MP3 ownership. 2005 forecast is 300,000 US households using, rising to 12.3 million US households by 2010. This feels about right -- that will be 36% of all MP3 owners in 2010 that also use podcasts.

Those are significant numbers -- when any of my traditional media colleagues ask me why I am "playing" with podcasts, they should think about those numbers (I also remember that my traditional media colleagues were asking me why I was "playing" with the Internet back in '93).

Incidentally, with the consistent praise being heaped upon "time-shifting" technologies and products, it's interesting to note that a recent ESPN study suggests that most people (or at least "non-early-adopters") don't want DVRs for various reasons. (According to Tivo's 8-K filed in March 2004, there are only 1.3 million subscribers to the service. . . I say "only" because I can not imagine living without mine).

Speaking of podcasts, expect the next installment of my CTO Connection podcast by the end of the week.