Mobile Video For Communications, Not Broadcast

from the calm-down-everyone dept

The phone people always come back to video. First it was all about videophoning, which has been shown repeatedly to have very little interest to most users. More recently, there's been a flurry of activity around TV on mobile phones. The latest is a new report saying that mobile TV will be a bigger revenue generator than SMS text messaging, despite the fact that no one seems to know if there's really any demand. However, if video on mobile phones is going to be a success, it's going to be because of user created content. There's already a growing world of people recording/analyzing their own lives via personal blogs, using audio posts and photos, so it only makes sense to add in the video component as well -- easily offered via a mobile phone. The problem (once again) is that too many carriers don't see how they can put in the necessary tollbooth. So, for now, the focus remains on videophones and mobile TV, and the real exciting uses of video on phones gets left behind.
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  • identicon
    John, 12 Oct 2004 @ 7:02am

    Video

    Mike, you are wrong on this one. Do you intelligence work. There are a lot of exciting things coming to the cell phone space using video besides just streaming TV. MobiTV is a nice diversion, but the real applications, infotainment and entertainment and gaming products are coming soon. Look for them :)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 12 Oct 2004 @ 8:14am

      Re: Video

      I never said there weren't other apps coming to phones... All I was saying was that streaming TV and videophoning weren't going to be the successful ones. Which part of what you say disagrees with that? I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I don't see how what you say says I'm wrong. It looks like you're agreeing with me, actually, by saying that mobile TV is "a nice diversion."

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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