Xinhua, Helsinki :
An ambitious collaboration by Finnish media companies has resulted in the creation of a series of new digital services for the sector-and made the small Nordic nation a trailblazer in designing a collective strategy for a highly competitive market sector.
The Next Media project lasted four years from 2010 to 2013 and involved 76 Finnish media companies as well as nine universities and research organizations. The end result of the project, unveiled earlier in 2014, was the development of forward-looking customer-centric digital services as well as the mapping of new business models for the transforming sector.
“When Next Media started there was no commercial digital publishing in Finland. Now we have hundreds of digital publications, newspapers and magazines,” said Focus Area Director Eskoensio Pipatti of lead media company Sanoma, a major Helsinki-based Nordic media group operating in 10 European countries. “The transition to digital was happening anyway, but the progress was much faster because of Next Media.”
According to Pipatti, one of the key outcomes of the project was the identification of business models to help traditional media transition to a digital age-in short, business strategies to help publishing media to survive.
“It’s clear that media companies that stick to paper will die sooner or later. So the goal was to find a business model that Finnish media could use to be profitable in the digital age,” Pipatti noted.
An important outcome was the identification of business models, such as combination subscriptions for print and digital publications, he said. “Business models around local media were also developed that solved problems such as how to compete with Google for local advertising and how to make communities on the reader side.”
Another significant result for the print industry besieged by ubiquitous and rapidly evolving digital platforms has been the development of an e-paper terminal.
Produced by a separate development team and tested in Finnish households between May and June of this year, the e-paper terminal is near to have a second version now, according to Pipatti.
But what’s the point of an e-paper terminal in the age of tablets and e-readers?
“We need a solution for people who don’t use tablets for reading digital papers. It’s also important for consumers who want more content on a spread or page than a tablet view offers, so they can skim through content,” he said.
