Cingular Wireless is offering mobile broadband access throughout the greater metropolitan Atlanta

Cingular customers can now use its 3G mobile broadband network to watch video clips while on-the-go from Alpharetta south to Riverdale and from Powder Springs east to Lilburn.

Cingular's 3G network is currently available in 54 communities nearby the major markets of Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Gary, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Tacoma and Washington D.C. The company will expand its 3G network coverage area to most major US markets by the end of the year.

The Cingular 3G network uses HSDPA/UMTS (High Speed Downlink Packet Access/Universal Mobile Telephone System) technology. This technology makes it possible for people to enjoy a wide variety of wireless content. HSDPA/UMTS gives Cingular the advantage of offering simultaneous voice and data services to customers and is based upon the global standard for wireless communications - GSM. This means more feature- rich services and content for users.

Customers who want to watch video highlights of last night's baseball game, or get a preview of HBO's Entourage series, can see it all - and more - by signing up for Cingular Video. Cingular Video is an on-demand streaming video service with a large selection of popular mobile content that can be viewed on 3G-capable Cingular phones.

Cingular's Georgia VP & GM, Cliff Minor said, "We've tailored Cingular Video so that customers can quickly and easily personalize and access some of their favorite entertainment and information sites. Imagine a soccer mom who can now get regular weather video updates every 30 minutes from her phone on the way between her son or daughters activities."

Helix-powered Cingular Video includes local weather forecasts in 100 cities across the country, three times more cities than any other service provider. Basic Cingular Video service includes more options for families from media outlets including ABC TV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN, Disney Channel, Disney Mobile Studios, ESPN, FOX Sports, FOX News, FOX TV, FUEL, HBO Family (premium), HBO Mobile (premium), iFilm, Jayski Alerts, Music Choice, NASCAR.com To Go (premium), NCAA Championship Sports Content, NBC, Richard Childress Racing, SPEED, The Weather Channel and TV Guide Channel.

Cingular currently offers 3G service on the LG CU320 and Samsung SGH-ZX10 handsets and will add several other handsets to its product line, including adding support for HSDPA, in the coming months. Cingular Video requires a $19.99 MEdia Net Unlimited data package. Premium content, such as HBO Mobile, is available on a an additional monthly subscription basis, while other content, such as music video clips from Music Choice, is available on a pay-per-view basis for a 24-hour period of time.

Cingular Video offers quick access to content users care about most. Cingular Video users can create a personalized home page with up to three links to their favorite video sites. In addition, the service is pre-set to automatically stream localized weather information to a user's personalized "News & Weather" page each day and provides local weather forecasts in 100 cities across the country, three times more cities than any other service provider.

While some wireless providers offer only a limited set of "non-premium" content options, Cingular Video provides the most complete basic-service package available in the U.S. market. Cingular Video is the only service to offer Fox News clips in addition to news broadcasts from CNN and NBC.

3 Italia hails growth of its mobile TV service

By Eric Sylvers, International Herald Tribune

Published: July 20, 2006

MILAN The Italian cellphone company 3 Italia said Thursday that its mobile television service attracted 111,000 clients in the first six weeks after it was introduced June 5 to coincide with the World Cup soccer tournament in Germany.


3 Italia is the first company in Europe to roll out commercially a mobile television service based on a technology called DVB-H, for Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld. Many analysts say DVB-H will become the dominant technology for broadcast mobile television because it is backed by Nokia, the largest maker of cellphones.

DVB-H television signals can be captured by as many users as are within range of a transmitter, much like traditional over-the-air TV broadcasting. Other mobile TV technology available in Europe relies on the third-generation cellphone networks, which can handle a limited number of users per transmitter.

"We didn't expect the numbers to be this high, and we also didn't expect the strong growth trend to continue even after the conclusion of the World Cup," Vincenzo Novari, chief executive of 3 Italia, said by telephone. "Everybody has been saying that mobile television has been overhyped, but so far the vast majority of users have been satisfied with the service, and this bodes well for the future of mobile television."

Though some analysts have given rosy predictions on how many people will begin watching television on their mobile phones, the consumer appetite for viewing sports and other programming on tiny screens has remained an unknown. Datamonitor, a research firm, predicts that more than 69 million people worldwide will subscribe to mobile television services by 2009, generating total revenue of $5.5 billion.

3 Italia is aiming to have 500,000 mobile television clients by the end of the year and forecasts that Italy will have 10 million people, almost 20 percent of the population, using the service of the various cellphone companies by 2010.

"I'm convinced that the trend we have seen in Italy will be repeated in many other countries when mobile television is introduced," Novari said.

Italy's hypercompetitive mobile phone market has helped keep the country on the cutting edge of many cellular technologies, including mobile television.

While 3 Italia is chalking up clients and its domestic rivals are ready to begin doing the same soon, in many other countries considered to be fertile ground for mobile broadcast television, like Britain, the frequencies needed to make the service possible have not yet been assigned to cellphone service providers.

South Korea, the first country to have mobile broadcast TV, uses a technology called Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, or DMB. TU Media, a South Korean service provider, signed up its first 100,000 clients in three months, twice as long as 3 Italia needed.

"This is an excellent starting point," Novari said. "The big question has been whether this is a niche service or if it will become something for the masses - and the first signs so far are that this is a service that appeals to the masses."

3 Italia clients can pay for the television service by the day, week or half- year. The service costs €3, or $3.80, if paid by the day, and comes out to about €1.50 a day when paid by the week. The cost drops to about 50 cents a day for six months. Novari said that most usage has been outdoors and that 40 percent of subscribers used it during office hours.

3 Italia's television service covers 2,000 of the biggest Italian cities and towns and about 40 are being added each day. It offers nine TV channels.

Verisign's Acquisition of M-Qube: $250 Million Or $266 Million?

That’s a significant difference of $16 million, and when the deal was announced in March, $250 million was said to be the official sale price. Now, in its Q2 earnings announcement, Verisign says the price was $266 million in cash. What gives?
(c) MocoNews

Как следует из предыдущего поста, квартальные продаж M-Qube - $12М. За год перед покупкой вряд ли они продали больше чем на $40М. Таким образом P/E Ratio при покупке составляло как минимум 6,5.

Earnings: Verisign's Q2: Jamster Stabilizing; M-Qube Generates $12 M For Q2

Verisign has posted its Q2 earnings for 2006, and done the analyst call, and in terms of its mobile content business the word "stabilized" was used a few dozen times, particularly in relation to Jamba/Jamster, which saw $74 million in revenue (down from $77 million last quarter). Dana Evan, CFO of VeriSign, said the stablization was happening earlier than previously forecast.

Verisign's Q2 Revenue 2006 was $392 million, of which $206 million was from the VeriSign Communications Services (VCS) Group, which provides intelligent communications, commerce and content services to telecommunications carriers and next generation service providers.
Within VCS the Communications and Commerce group pulled in $120 million, $86 million from content, including $74 million from Jamba/Jamster. Its recent acquisition M-Qube contributed about $6 $12 million (thanks Steve). VSC ended the quarter with a base of approximately 8.9 million wireless billing customer subscribers, which is around 24% more than the previous year.
For Q3, VRSN expects mobile content-related revenues in the low $90 million range, with Jamba/Jamster contributing about $70 million to that number (rest is presumably from M-Qube).
In question time Verisign CEO Stratton Sclavos declined to take credit for the stablization of Jamba/Jamster. "Let's say the same as we saw years ago with domain names, the flood and the false demand is out of the market and now what we see is real demand," said Sclavos. "We've hit stabilization by hitting the bottom of real demand...growth will come by step-by-step improvements across the platform."
He also said that Verisign would continue to run the D2C side of the business in "the high teens of margins", and that it would make the trade off with marketing. "To the extent that we see things in China or Europe take off we'll invest more dollars", if it doesn't do so well Verisign would not be investing a large amount of money to kickstart it -- so those countries will be spared their version of the Crazy Frog.
On country-wise uptake on Jamba/Jamster (from transcript): U.K. has pretty much become irrelevant as it relates to revenue contribution because of the steep decline there...Germany has continued to slow, although it's still shrinking a little bit, although it remains the biggest market and we did see some months of growth and some months of decline there in the quarter. We did see a substantial uptick in China during the quarter and took some of our first revenues from that marketplace and we're interested in seeing that continue. The U.S. also declined but in recent weeks we've actually seen it start to grow again.

(c) MocoNews

Несколько слов от меня:
То, что выручка Jamster'а падает - не удивительно, ибо методы, которыми они добивались текущих цифр продаж таковы, что неизбежно должны были вызвать последующий откат. Скажу больше - такими действиями они могли и убить рынок мобильного контента вообще.
Скорее следует удивляться тому, что они хотя бы удержали продажи на прежнем уровне.

MobileESPN MVNO Revenue Modeling Estimates

(с) MocoNews, Rafat Ali

I'll get in trouble for posting this, but what the heck...if they ask to take it down, I will.

Anyway, following on the Merrill Lynch research note yesterday, asking Disney to pull the plug on its MobileESPN. The chart in the note details the revenue modeling which ML analysts have come up with.
I still don't think it is a good idea to give it such a short shrift. It need more takes and iterations and the industry and Disney needs to be willing to be patient on that. It might be that the bottomline considerations and shareholders/Wall Street might not allow that leeway, but that would be a shame.

China Mobile's music club tunes into new market

China Mobile, the larger of the country's two cellular operators, yesterday launched a wireless music club as part of a drive to increase its presence in a lucrative emerging market.

The club, M.Music, offers a one-stop service to China Mobile subscribers, including copyrighted music downloads and sharing, and could help lift the struggling record industry.

M.Music also offers members access to the latest labels, downloads of music videos, singers' photos and ringtones as well as magazines in SMS (short messaging service) format.

China Mobile Vice-President Lu Xiangdong said the club's launch marked a big step for China Mobile as it seeks a greater role in the fast-growing mobile music market.

"Our wireless music club will soon become a new tool for record companies to release new labels," he said.

"We are ready to work with our partners to form a complete industry chain ranging from payment, operating platform, customer relations, marketing and promotions," Lu said.

Hong Kong-listed China Mobile Ltd has 269 million mobile subscribers.

The world's major record companies, including Universal, EMI, Warner and Sony BMG, welcomed news of the music club.

"Record companies are having a tough time due to piracy brought by new technologies such as the Internet," said Hung Tik, managing director of Universal Music China.

Hung estimated the traditional music market in the first half of this year shrank 30-40 per cent in terms of revenue. The market was worth 1.65 billion yuan (US$209 million) last year, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.

Shanghai-based iResearch estimated the mobile music market was worth 2.6 billion yuan (US$329 million) last year, compared to 1.58 billion yuan (US$200 million) in 2004.

And the well-established billing system for mobile phones means the mobile music market is largely free of piracy.

Song Ke, managing director of Taihe Rye Music Co Ltd, a domestic record firm, said wireless music publishing last year accounted for 40 per cent of the company's annual revenue and the figure is expected to grow to 50 per cent.

But record firms are not the only beneficiaries, China Mobile's increasing penetration of the mobile music market will also help boost sales of music phones for manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola.

Sony Ericsson will be the first handset maker to offer a customized mobile phone for China Mobile's wireless music club, said Gunilla Nordstrom, president of Sony Ericsson China.

(c) China Daily

Consumers slowly giving cellphone TV a look

The trend is starting to catch the attention of broadcasters and phone companies

Wannabe divas on Canada's Next Top Model have a new place to vent their frustrations and grab more time in the spotlight: the cellphone.

Confessionals and other content from the show that doesn't air are repackaged into short clips for the so-called third screen, a format that's attracting a following.

The debut of made-for-cellphone TV content reflects a potentially disruptive change in viewing habits. It's a trend that is catching the attention of broadcasters, which need to keep pace with audience shifts, and telephone companies, which must differentiate services amid rising competition.

"Two years ago, you walked into major content companies and showed mobile video and no one had heard about it," said Raja Khanna, co-founder of QuickPlay Media Inc., which enables TV content including Top Model to be played on cellphones. "Now they're hiring people to look at it, and building their mobile content catalogues."

Cellphone TV is still a novelty here, launched in recent years by the top carriers, Bell Mobility Inc., Telus Corp. and Rogers Wireless Communications Inc..

The wireless carriers don't disclose the number of TV clients, but industry observers describe it as the "early adopter" phase. In other words, a small market. Limitations include the tiny screen and choppy video, which make it difficult to watch for a long time, and significant bandwidth use, which is costly for carriers to provide.

"It eats up so much bandwidth and you have to share the revenue with the content providers," said Genuity Capital Markets analyst Dvai Ghose, adding that e-mail and text messaging are currently more attractive for carriers.

Nevertheless, demand is expected to grow as more consumers buy video-enabled cellphones, and the quality of the screens improve.

"From an industry point of view, from a revenue point of view, it's early days," Mr. Khanna acknowledged. "From an interest point of view, there's high interest from every broadcaster right now."

So far, the carriers haven't strayed far from the traditional TV format. Rogers, Bell and Telus all opted to offer MobiTV Inc.'s streaming TV service, with its well-known channels, such as CBC Newsworld and The Learning Channel.

Telus chose that format because it could be introduced quickly, and reflects the way most people watch TV today, explained Telus's vice-president of consumer product marketing, Fred Di Blasio. "We try not to jam technology down people's throats," he said.

While there will always be a place for that format, sports and news highlights, along with clips of shows like Top Model are also popular. Clips are the area where QuickPlay, whose customers include Telus, Rogers, and Bell, is focused. Industry players agree it's best to keep an open mind for now.

"Mobile is growing, but it's still very early days, which means that you shouldn't be limiting what it is that you're trying," said Maria Hale, vice-president of content business development for CHUM Ltd., which offers cellphone content for a dozen shows including Top Model and VJ Search: The Series.

Clips, which typically last one to five minutes, are a natural fit with the cellphone's on-the-go image. They can be easily viewed while riding the bus or waiting in a lineup.

Mr. Khanna refers to it as a "content snack." "How much time are [consumers] away from a bigger, better screen?" he said. "Not a lot of time for most people."

News and entertainment updates are what people want to see on the cellphone, said Greg Treffry, vice-president of business development and specialty networks at CanWest MediaWorks, which offers Global National clips for cellphones.

Rival network CTV also believes the highlight format shows promise. The network recently launched cellphone reports for Report on Business Television and CTV News. And a few months earlier, it unveiled the 10 Spot Grab, a mix of previews, highlights and excerpts from MTV's top shows.

"It's those little moments where you want a little entertainment, a little story, to catch up on the news and hockey highlights," said Kris Faibish, CTV's vice-president of digital media.

More content changes could be ahead as CTV's owner, Bell Globemedia, which also owns The Globe and Mail, last week agreed to buy CHUM for $1.4-billion.

Not every show is ready for cellphone prime time yet, Mr. Khanna said. Since it's early days, news, youth-oriented shows, and flagship programs make the most sense for now, he believes.

The duration and content of shows aren't the only things that may be altered. Different factors that should be taken into account when creating content for the smaller screen include sound and camera angles, Ms. Faibish said.

"You're going to see changes made so viewing is much more amicable for cellphones," predicts Andrew Wright, director of business development at Bell Mobility.

While the fate of mobile TV is still up in the air, what does appear clear is that the TV set is unlikely to pull a disappearing act from the home any time soon.

"For us it's an extension of your traditional TV experience," Mr. Treffry said. "You're still going to come home and watch Survivor on your TV."

CATHERINE MCLEAN

(c) Globeandmail.com

30K SMS Sent Through Skype Every Day

Small figure, but interesting to note: Skype has opened up for users to be able to sent SMS to mobile phone (or is it vice versa?)...from eBay's Q2 conference call today: "One feature, the ability to send and receive SMS messages, has seen strong adoption, with users already sending over 30,000 SMS messages per day".

(c) MocoNews

Sprint Aims To Sell 10 Million Tracks

Groove Mobile has sent out a press release saying that the Sprint full track download service (which uses Groove) "is on target to sell over 10 million tracks by the end of 2006?. The prediction is based on the fact that one million tunes were downloaded in the first three months and a second million in the following two months, and extrapolating the growth. The language goes from "selling" to "downloading", and there have been questions about how many downloads are paid on the service before.
Still, Groove goes on to say that it thinks there is minimal resistance to the $2.50 price for downloads (a lot higher than just about anywhere else) and that it hopes to sell more songs per device. "Currently, iTunes sells about 25 songs per iPod. In mobile music, the objective is to sell 200 songs per device – with insightful marketing, it's achievable."
I think it's a little ambitious...ambition is good, but at some point it goes over the top. Assuming a two-year life span for a phone, that's two songs purchased every week.

(c) MocoNews

Stanford Fellow Imagines Every Cell Phone as Citizen Media Outlet

(c) Mark Glaser

Digging Deeper

Perhaps some day in the not so distant future, every person on the planet who has a cell phone camera will be able to snap a photo of a newsworthy event happening in front of them and easily send it to a web clearinghouse of such news images. That’s the dream of Erik Sundelof (pictured at left), a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University, a program that aims to develop technology to advance humanitarian goals in underserved communities.

While there are plenty of big news outlets such as the BBC that accept photo and video submissions from their audience, and phone services that let you send photos to moblogs or mobile blogs, the idea of one global service for submissions from every type of cell phone hasn’t caught on yet.

Sundelof has spent much of the past school year at Stanford developing a prototype of such a service, currently mocked up at InTheFieldOnline.net . I met him for lunch and he showed me how simple the system was. Take a photo or video with your camera phone. Send a text message with attachment to an email address, and voila! it’s posted to the site after just a brief delay. He’s tested it in rural villages in India, and with his parents in Sweden, where he grew up.

At the moment, he’s working on a “cooler version” of the service in the hopes of attracting Silicon Valley funding, or perhaps paying customers who run newspaper sites or other media outlets. His hope is to build an open source software platform — with programming code that can be improved and modified by anyone — to enable people to send in photos or video to central sites or to their blogs or websites of their choice. The simpler, the better.

I was impressed with Sundelof’s knowledge of citizen journalism and his hopes for its future, envisioning a time when more people could help tell the stories around them, and traditional media might merge with the best citizen contributions to tell a more complete truth. Even though he has more of a background in technology than in media, Sundelof has an interesting philosophy about citizen journalism and takes an outsider’s perspective on hot-button issues such as moderating forums (he likes them more open) and personalized news (he doesn’t think people should be able to filter out bad news).

The following is an edited transcript of our wide-ranging discussion on his project and the shifting media landscape.

What first got you interested in citizen journalism?

Erik Sundelof: Before I came here to Stanford [in September 2005], I’d never worked with citizen media. And I came here because the Reuters Foundation wants to help their organization to develop open source media software. When I came here I thought, what can we do for them that is something new? The problem with open source software is that they tend to copycat. Like OpenOffice is just a copy of Microsoft Office. They’re not doing anything new. They’re not trying to compete by doing anything new, they’re just trying to beat the price.

I started to think about what would be my first thought after a car bomb went off. Certainly not to run to an Internet cafe. That’s probably the last thing I would think about. But I might call my friends with my cell phone to tell them I’m all right. Then you have your phone out, so now the possibility is that you could also record that, shoot it and send it to Reuters, the BBC or wherever. That would be a great tool to really create a vehicle and channel for those people to get their frustration out, that would help the democracy part.

I have been dealing with blogs but never put a category of citizen media on it. I don’t see the need for putting a label on it as ‘citizen media’ — why not just call it media. Because everything else is just called news and it depends on how you present it, how you package it and mash it up.

When I was at the We Media conference at Reuters in London, I learned that Reuters is thinking a lot about this subject of citizen journalism, but they also have all these professional journalists out in the field, so they are trying to figure out how to make it work.

Sundelof: I think the right combination is to have the [reported] article and then a small box with a way to give users to tell their side of the story, their contribution.

How do you moderate that? How do you filter it?

Sundelof: I think it becomes easier when you’re using cell phone technology, when the user needs their identification. You need to make sure the news is all accurate and that the news is coming from the location where it happened, which is easier if you have a computer but with a cell phone you have to do triangulation. If you’re not Google, you don’t have the money to do that. So without money, you have to make a deal with a cell phone service.

They have to have a global positioning system (GPS) to know where you are?

Sundelof: You can still use triangulation to find out which cell tower the call is coming from. Then you need to map that, which takes time and resources, and you end up needing Google, because they can get the attention of cell phone providers. [Cell phone companies] won’t listen to smaller organizations, I think that’s the main problem.

During the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina, people who were stranded in homes were sending text messages from their cell phones to friends to tell them where they were. Those messages were posted to a blog at the Times-Picayune newspaper’s website, which then was read by emergency crews who went out and saved the people.

Sundelof: There were similar things after the Pakistan earthquake, because the only thing people could rely on was text messages. The volume of calls becomes so high that you can’t get through by voice but you can get through with text messages because it uses less data. What is lacking is the way to organize the material when it comes in. There’s so many people sending in material, that it’s difficult to authenticate everything quickly. You need to have permission from the network provider. They have to be able to give you that information, and there are a whole lot of legal issues there.

There are many different aspects to this, and the cell phone is a perfect complement to news contributed to the web. You can get it online easily. There were similar things going on after the London bombings, but the media collected that and then put it up on the web. It would have been better if you could just upload it immediately.

There are numerous examples of similar stuff going on but the big news organizations don’t get it at all. They get stuck in details and legal issues that they really shouldn’t care about. I can understand that the lawyers [worry about unfiltered material] but there are always ways around it.

It’s a control issue, not wanting to give up control. There’s a fear that if there are citizen journalists, then what’s the role of the professional journalists? Someone encroaching on their turf and not being paid anything or being paid very little. So the professionals are afraid their whole purpose is disappearing but I don’t think it’s really true.

Sundelof: They have a clearer purpose because they can actually focus on bigger events and present more well thought out articles…Events like Rodney King and similar events, it’s really interesting to have cell phones as part of the scene. Because it’s much harder to get away with that if you have 40 people with cell phones sending it in. You can’t say, ‘No, it was not police brutality.’ Well we have 40 different people saying they saw it — with proof.

I really see an opening here for citizen contributions. The key here is that the media organizations need to realize they are losing control. They can’t really control [the news] now because people are posting this stuff to other blogs. I think it would be better to merge traditional reporting with citizen media rather than have a [totally] new media. To take the best of the old fashioned news organizations and bring in the power of the bloggers, because you have so many people investigating. Mix them and you have an extremely good organization and you’ll have content that’s really important in finding out the truth.

I guess it’s the idea of Yahoo News or Google News where they are trying to aggregate the different types of media on the same page.

Sundelof: I’m actually against Google News, the way it is now, because I don’t believe you should customize the news. You shouldn’t present to the person only what he wants to see. Then we’re creating narrow-minded people. They only see what they want to see, and when they hear something else, they say, ‘That didn’t happen.’ Well it did, but you chose to go to Google News and only see what you wanted to see all the time.

I think it’s really dangerous, because I don’t feel that news should be in the hands of such a big corporation such as Google. There’s already a problem here in the States over the ownership structure of news companies. I don’t think the solution is to go to one big company instead and say that Google News should solve it all. I think users like it because then they don’t get so upset. They get exposed to just the things they want to get exposed to.

I know that people here use their cell phones differently than they do in Europe or Japan. And in Africa, the landlines are so bad that cell phones have taken over as means for communication. It’s much more important in developing nations.

Sundelof: It’s much cheaper to build the infrastructure for cell phones, and Africa is the most perfect place for launching any cell phone service because it’s so flat you don’t have trouble with the base stations, you don’t need that many. You can still get decent coverage, of course you do have the problem with dictators which you can’t really solve.

But in Asia you don’t need to get that much money for each transaction because you have so many people. If you add up the people in China and India, you have one fourth of the population of the world. If they send one message each, and you say they pay $1 each per year, that’s $2 billion. There’s no way that your cost for setting up the system will match that $2 billion. It’s not even close. That’s where you have the big markets, because you don’t have to charge them much at all.

We’re running a number of test cases. We have been running this in India and have tried it out in most parts of the world. It’s worked well in the rural parts of India. We tried it out with an organization called Video Volunteers . They are bringing in solutions for people to do their own documentaries in villages in India. They go over there, hand over the video equipment, teach them how to use the equipment and edit the video, and let them do what they want. They’re creating a dialogue without the Internet. Information technology is not always about the Internet.

I want to make sure even my parents in Sweden can do it. They just have to remember a number.

How does InTheFieldOnline.net differ from all the moblogging functions that cell phone companies offer, or sites such as moblogUK , which offers free blog space for camera phone pictures?

Sundelof: They are similar but to some extent they are lacking in simplicity. If you don’t do everything right, you are thrown out of the system. I say we just capture it all and do the best we can.

It’s more of an open system?

Sundelof: Yes, that’s right. They usually don’t support other cell phone services. They say you have to post it on a moblog, I say you can post it anywhere. So you can post to Flickr or Blogger or Drupal. The difference is we allow people to post on the media of their choice, rather than on my site, I don’t care.

Merill Lynch: Time to Pull Plug on Mobile ESPN

Merrill Lynch today (18.07.2006) issued a note to investors calling for ESPN to "throw in the towel" on its branded mobile phone service.

Analysts Jessica Reif Cohen and Michael Kopelman on Wednesday wrote that "it is time for Disney to pull the plug on Mobile ESPN," charging that since Disney launched the service with much fanfare during Super Bowl XL, the company has had little luck landing paying subscribers.

Merrill added that while Disney significantly reduced the cost of the handset in April, dropping the price of its Samsung model to $99 after the original Sanyo handset launched at $399, “the model does not appear to be a particularly attractive use of capital,” as the reseller business traditionally offers a low return on investment. (Incidentally, the bulkier Sanyo is now available free-of-charge after a $29 mail-in rebate.)

Cohen and Kopelman now estimate that ESPN Mobile will lure a mere 30,000 subscribers over the course of this financial year, well below their original estimate of 240,000. Along with the losses generated by a second Disney-branded phone service, ML expects that the Mouse will lose $135 million on its experiment in FY06.

While the ML analysts wrote that Disney should shelve Mobile ESPN, the undeniable lure of the branding opportunity was likely a primary factor in the decision to launch the service. Disney may have also looked to use the initiative as a means to analyse consumer consumption of wireless content.

For its part, ESPN said that it has no plans to discontinue its phone service, saying that surveys indicate that users are very satisfied with the application. “While sales have been slower than expected, we have added retail distribution outlets, introduced a new thin handset and have enhanced marketing efforts,” an ESPN spokesperson said.

Anthony Crupi
(c) MediaWeek

Where's my 3.5G handset?

Dearth of devices hampers growth of next-gen technology

The number of 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers globally will soar from around 2.5m to more than 300m in 2011 despite a shortage in compelling devices, according to a new study.

Mobile operators are looking to supercharge mobile data access speeds with technology that puts 3G on steroids, offering download speeds of anything up between 1-2Mbps.

These so-called 3.5G services use a variety of technologies, including High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) enhancements to the W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) 3G technology and Evolution-Data Optimised (EV-DO), an extension to the CDMA family of standards.

Handset availability problems that affected the market development of 3G will be repeated in the case of the 3.5G market, according to a report by market analysts Informa Telecoms and Media. It expects a dearth of suitable handsets and devices to be a problem until at least the end of next year.

"A lack of compelling devices and content led to delayed launches and slow take-up of W-CDMA and EV-DO services, and early HSDPA and EV-DO Revision A services are expected to suffer from the very same problems," said Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and co-author of its Future Mobile Broadband Strategic Report.

Most HSDPA services are launching with only PC cards and notebooks, although a number of early handsets are also arriving. The CDMA camp is even further behind in developing kit. "As of June no major vendor has unveiled plans for EV-DO Rev. A handsets, although data cards are on the way," Saadi said.

A lack of compelling handsets will slow mass-market take up of 3.5G mobile broadband services in 2006-07, but handsets will start to mature in 2008, according to Informa. It reckons 3.5G handset sales and subscriptions will take off in 2008-09. By 2011, 85 per cent of 3.5G devices sold will be handsets, and the remaining 15 per cent will be notebooks and PC cards.

Mobile WiMAX will compete with HSPA and EV-DO Rev A/B in mobile broadband markets but will be hampered to an even greater extent than those technologies from the slow arrival of compelling notebooks and handsets.

"Mobile WiMAX will play a relatively minor role in the mobile broadband market through 2011, largely because Mobile WiMAX notebooks and tablets will not arrive in volume until 2008-09, and compelling Mobile WiMAX handsets won't arrive until 2010," said Mike Roberts, principal analyst at Informa and the second co-author of the Future Mobile Broadband report.

"By comparison, HSDPA notebooks and handsets are already shipping, which means that the HSDPA device market is one to two years ahead of the Mobile WiMAX device market," he added.

While WiMax might be slow off the starting blocks in the mobile market, the technology will do much better in the fixed, nomadic and portable broadband segments over the next five years. Many WiMAX subscribers will be using fixed indoor modems rather than mobile devices, Informa predicts.

By John Leyden
(c) ® The Register

Video on Mobile

Actimagine Raises 3M Euro From GRP Partners

PARIS, July 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Actimagine, which provides the most advanced video compression technologies, announces today that the Company has raised EUR3 million in equity financing from US venture capital firm GRP Partners . This first round of institutional fund raising will enable Actimagine to accelerate its business development in the USA and Japan.

Actimagine licenses Mobiclip(TM), its patented power-efficient software video codec, which delivers better video quality while reducing power consumption. Mobiclip is a completely new technology, and is therefore not subject to MPEG, MP3 or any other codec licenses. Mobiclip has already been endorsed by major content studios such as Sony Pictures Digital to deliver full-length, full-screen, 30 frames per second movies on 128MB memory cards. Leading handset manufacturers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson have launched marketing campaigns for new smart phones by bundling them with memory cards, powered by Mobiclip, containing full-length blockbuster movies. With Mobiclip, a Nokia phone with full standard batteries runs more than 7 hours of video playback without recharging.

"Mobile video becomes a market reality. We believe that improving the user experience is a key driver to establish successful recurring business models for mobile carriers, handset manufacturers as well as content publishers. On mobile platform, user experience is about valuable contents, higher quality, simpler usage and long battery lifetime. We leverage on our expertise in video on mobile gaming consoles and toys to provide a state-of-the-art video codec for mobile phones. Our ambition is to become the leading video technology," says Andre Pagnac, Actimagine CEO.

"Actimagine has developed an innovative and impressive video technology which can help mobile operators and equipment manufacturers to deliver a truly optimized and complete product offering to a mobile video market that is still struggling to define and perfect a sustainable and profitable business model." says Yves Sisteron from GRP Partners.

In the wider consumer electronics industry, Actimagine's patented technology has already been successfully adopted by key market players. Nintendo Co., Ltd. has licensed Mobiclip to feature 90 minutes of animated classics such as Shrek(TM) or Pokemon(TM) on 32MB cartridges on the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP and the Nintendo DS(TM). Fisher-Price uses Actimagine's power-efficient software video codec to provide cartoons on its Pixter(R) Multi-Media toy.

Actimagine also joined forces with Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas to increase video performances for its ARM based portfolio of microcontrollers. By achieving higher video performance without requiring a higher performance processor or increasing overall power consumption, these enhanced SoCs open new possibilities for portable media devices.

About Actimagine

Created in March 2003 by a team of highly qualified engineers and experienced managers, Actimagine Corp is registered in Delaware, USA and currently headquartered in Paris, France. The company has overseas branches in Tokyo and Singapore and plans to open its US office in the very near future. Actimagine provides a most advanced video codec that delivers higher quality and higher compression while using far less CPU power than usual solution and standards.

TriBand by BSkyB and Mobile Data "Uncomfortable"

BSkyB Shares Decline on Plan to Invest $729 Million

July 18 (Bloomberg)

BSkyB, chaired by Rupert Murdoch, plans to begin offering customers phone and Internet services next month, the Isleworth, England-based company said today in a statement. It will offer a basic broadband service as part of its Sky TV service for no additional monthly charge.

``The market has clearly been taken aback by the scale of BSkyB's ambition,'' Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis Securities Ltd. in London, said in an e-mailed research note. The investment amount ``compared with many estimates of around half of this level,'' she said.

BSkyB's service will compete with the combined Internet, phone and TV offerings from companies including NTL Inc., the U.K.'s biggest cable-TV carrier, and BT Group Plc, the former phone monopoly. BSkyB has more than 8 million pay-TV customers.

Attractive Strategy

``In our view the strategy is attractive, and although we expect the broadband market to be very competitive going forward, we believe that BSkyB should be able to carve out a substantial, and very profitable, position,'' Tilbian wrote.

Price Plans

BSkyB will offer broadband service at three speeds, 2 megabits, 8 megabits and 16 megabits. The slowest service, to be called Sky Broadband Base, will be included with Sky's monthly TV service. The Broadband Mid package will cost 5 pounds a month for Sky TV customers, and Broadband Max will cost 10 pounds. All three will include a free wireless connection box.

The services are available in areas covered by BSkyB's broadband network, which currently encompasses 28 percent of U.K. households, the company said. BSkyB plans to be able to reach 70 percent of homes by the end of 2007.

The company also said customers can have unlimited landline calls in the U.K. for 5 pounds a month under the Sky Talk service.

The combined services will also compete with broadband and fixed-line phone packages sold by mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse Group Plc under the TalkTalk brand.

`Uncomfortable'

BSkyB's CEO said the company's mobile strategy is focused on mobile content and new distribution streams for its content.

``We are not that interested in being a mobile network operator at this point,'' James Murdoch said ``It's an uncomfortable marriage between mobile and broadband. We think that's uncomfortable for customers and they won't get it.''

BSkyB's approach to mobile and broadband differs from that of NTL and France Telecom SA. NTL agreed to buy Virgin Mobile for 962 million pounds in April to add wireless phones to its television and Internet services.

France Telecom, Europe's second-largest telephone company, said in May that it will start offering Internet, television and business services under the Orange brand. France Telecom chose to unite its services under the Orange banner to capitalize on the brand's customer base, it said then.

The new Orange brand will also introduce a number of advanced services including high-definition television via Internet in France and free broadband for U.K. customers signing up for a new cellular-phone contract, the company said in May.

(c) Bloomberg

GoComics Launches New Title On Sprint

This release is about uclick mobile signing an agreement with Wowmax Media to launch the "manga and anime hit Guilstein" on its GoComics Books mobile application. The announcement is pretty interesting for a number of reasons -- it's "the first time Guilstein has been published in any form in the U.S., as well as the first time in English. Guilstein will also be the first manga work introduced for mobile before appearing in print". There'll also be other content such as wallpapers and videos.

The announcement also marks the launch of uclick's GoComics Books (which has western-style comics) and TokyoPop Mobile Manga (which has manga comics) readers on Sprint last week. Each application is an "anthology magazine" with several titles being offered concurrently, for a cost of $3.99 per month. One benefit of anthology-style comics is that even if one storyline ends others continue, so there's always a reason for readers to come back. Uclick has also lined up Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile and Nextel to host the application, and will launch it on the website in August.

Notes From User Generated Content Conference

Russell Buckley of MobHappy attended the User Generated Content Conference in Munich, his write-up is here. There's a wry comment about start-ups increasing their perceived value by putting "social" in front of their business plan...Also this interesting paragraph:
"Last year, Jumbuck alone accounted for 19% of wap traffic in the UK, which totaled 2 billion page impressions. 30% was accounted for by other mobile community sites, with 51% being "the rest"." Almost half of the WAP content was for mobile communities....

RIM says media features to expand BlackBerry market

TORONTO (Reuters) - Media features and lifestyle applications will be key to the ability of Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry e-mail device to capture a bigger slice of the broader consumer market, the company's co-chief executive said on Tuesday.

"We'll be definitely supporting more forms of media, it's a big part of our direction," Jim Balsillie told Reuters, adding that delivering features such as photography, music and video with the BlackBerry "opens up some bigger markets."

"It's totally adjacent and complementary in some respects, but also in other respects in lays right on top our existing market."

The BlackBerry has become a staple for business people, politicians, lawyers and other professionals, but has yet to gain widespread popularity among mainstream users of portable technology.

World Cup Football's Online

Mobile Coverage Fell Short; TV Still Rules

Starcom's research, which involved interviews with 1,000 consumers, found that the novelty of being able to watch matches online or on mobile phones was no longer enough - it had to be fast, reliable and of high quality.
Some numbers, mainly UK focused: UK mobile operator 3 recorded more than 3.6 million viewings of its programming...3's match highlights channel proved the most popular with 60,000 people - the equivalent of a capacity crowd at Arsenal's new stadium - tuning in daily.
The BBC website managed 399 million impressions for the duration. The total live streamed games reached 5.72 million across the tournament. And a total of 5.3 million digital satellite users pressed the "red button" to access interactive services.
The Fifa World Cup site, run by Yahoo, clocked up more than 138 million video streams during the competition. Furthermore, 3.5 million users viewed pictures posted by fans on Yahoo!'s photo-sharing site Flickr.

(c) MocoNews

SmartVideo Completes $9 Million Private Placement

Company Enhances Working Capital as the Mobile Video Category Continues to Gain Momentum across the Globe

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 17, 2006--SmartVideo(TM) Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: SMVD.OB), a leader in the delivery of high quality mobile video, today announced that it has completed a securities purchase agreement to issue and deliver 7,200,000 shares of common stock and five-year warrants to a group of accredited investors, raising $9 million in gross proceeds. The amount greatly exceeds SmartVideo's target of $8 million and is expected to be used towards the Company's continued development of cutting-edge applications for delivering live, on-demand or downloaded content to wireless subscribers using handsets, PDAs and laptops worldwide.

As the mobile video category continues to gain widespread adoption, SmartVideo has continued to work towards establishing itself as one of the leading content providers by partnering with more than 25 live TV channels and on-demand video programming partners, such as ABC News, Fox Sports, MSNBC, Fashion TV, E! Entertainment Television, The Weather Channel and others. SmartVideo is compatible with Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 and 5.0, Smartphones, PDAs/Pocket PCs, and Symbian OS devices with Real Player. The Company is also developing and testing software that will enable compatibility on a larger selection of phones.

In addition, SmartVideo is pioneering the ad-supported mobile environment by being the first company in the mobile entertainment industry to offer interstitial advertising on mobile devices. SmartVideo's technologies and applications for dynamic ad insertion within mobile video have been instrumental in positioning SmartVideo as a leader in the ad supported space and most recently, the Company completed a successful Beta test with a major national portal.

"Mobile video has emerged as one of the biggest growth categories in the wireless industry with some of the biggest media companies in the world looking to capitalize on the space," said David Ross, President of SmartVideo. "This new round of funding enables SmartVideo to obtain and create new exciting content in addition to new custom-built applications that will benefit subscribers and mobile partners alike."

Glenn Singer, Chairman of the Board of SmartVideo, added, "This financing provides us with enhanced working capital and will assist us in the continued execution of our business plan. These funds will allow us to expand our marketing and service activities which will help us to form a world-class global company."

Mobile Flash Apps Shop Smashing Ideas Buys BlueSkyNorth

Seattle-based mobile Flash and other interactive applications firm Smashing Ideas has bought UK company BlueSkyNorth, marking an entrance into western Europe. Both companies produce Flash content -- BlueSkyNorth focuses on Flash Lite content for mobile phones.

"The studios will co-develop a content site in Europe, along with a broad range of casual games, lifestyle applications, and other mobile content. The acquisition continues Smashing Ideas' drive to expand its footprint in the mobile marketplace and to further its Flash Lite content group efforts. Terms of the deal were not disclosed."
This spring, Smashing Ideas also announced its mobile content aggregation plans.

(c) MocoNews

Tiny Time Slot, Big Plan

Mobile Makeover Series from GoTV Features Integrations

Mobile television programmer GoTV Networks plans to premiere today a made-for-mobile reality show that will be one of the first significant programming experiments for the emerging cellular video business.

GoTV's "Primped" is a 30-episode unscripted series in the makeover genre that runs for six weeks. Sprint customers with access to mobile TV content can get all 30 episodes for $6.99.

Given the show's run and the investment by more than 12 advertisers into branded integration in the show, GoTV's "Primped" is one of the boldest mobile programming experiments to date in cellular TV. GoTV has amassed more than 100,000 subscribers for its stable of 12 premium channels since its 2005 relaunch as a mobile TV programmer.

Also, GoTV, which produces mobile programming in several different genres for its channels, can look to a veteran to guide the endeavor. Daniel Tibbets, GoTV's executive VP and head of development and programming, previously worked at Fox, where he oversaw the development of Fox's groundbreaking work in cellular video with the introduction of the industry's first "mobisodes," or TV episodes made specifically for cellphone viewing, in early 2005. While those shows-mobile versions of "24" and "The Simple Life"-were spinoffs from existing TV shows, "Primped" exists solely as a digital program.

Broadcast and cable networks, as well as studios and other content providers, are also developing programs for the third screen by resurrecting unused clips, reconfiguring existing programs and creating original content for the on-the-go consumer, such as CBS's planned mini-soaps for mobile TV and NBC's existing wine-tasting show. "Primped" will also be a proving ground for product placement in mobile TV shows.

Youth, Youth, Youth

"Primped" has integrated more than 12 brands, including Conair, Dollhouse, Divina, Biatta Intimates and Union Bay. That's helped cover costs, since the advertisers' investments represent 15 to 20 percent of the show's budget, Mr. Tibbets said.

GoTV's new effort has youth written all over it. The show's a dead-on target for the 16- to 24-year-old demographic. Popular model Vida Guerra hosts the show, in which three "plain Janes" are made over.

A show like "Primped" is a good match for Sprint, said Kaan Yigit, an analyst with Solutions Research Group in Toronto. Fashion shows tend to do well among young audiences and among African American and Hispanic audiences, who are usually more fashion-forward, and Sprint is strong in those demos, he said. In fact, Sprint boasts more than 30 percent of the combines African American and Hispanic market for handsets and 27 percent market share of the 20 to 29 age group for cellphones, Mr. Yigit said.

The trick to making "Primped" pop will be to generate the elusive buzz and word of mouth that is so critical to success for youth, he said. "You need buzz. Without buzz, you have nothing," he said.

Ahead of the Wave

GoTV will rely on carrier marketing, cross-promotion with its advertising partners-such as a text-to-win contest sponsored by Dollhouse-and promotion from Ms. Guerra on her Web site and MySpace pages.

Mr. Tibbets said he's aiming to get out in front of what many expect will be a coming wave of interest in mobile TV. For instance, mobile market researcher M:Metrics said the U.S. penetration of third-generation phones, capable of delivering better-quality video than previous handsets, has risen from under 500,000 a year ago to about 4.8 million today. Those numbers should grow quickly because U.S. consumers tend to replace their cellphones about every 18 months. JupiterResearch predicts mobile video subscribers will grow from 1 percent of cellphone users in 2005 to 5 percent in 2010.

Each episode of "Primped" runs for two to four minutes, and new editions debut every weekday. The makeover contest winner receives a grand prize package valued at more than $20,000. The series will be available for purchase for the rest of the year.

The show features a mix of quick tips on hair, makeup and fashion as well as the staples of reality shows, such as catfights and nights on the town. Mr. Tibbets contends the combination of informational tips and short entertainment bites is what mobile customers want.

But "Primped" is not a new genre and certainly not groundbreaking in content. That's the point, Mr. Tibbets said. "In developing new formats for new platforms you have to take what the consumer is familiar with and twist it just enough to make it unique and original," he said.

Part of that twist comes in the way the show is shot with close-ups for the small screen. Episodes won't include many MTV-style cut-ins or lingering shots. Also, program producers must build a story arc and a tease for the next episode in a sardine-size time slot. "Every second is critical to the success of that single episode," Mr. Tibbets said. "We have to engage them from the first episode and tell them what they are about to see and hold them till that conclusion."

The next three years should yield a flurry of programming experiments for mobile TV, including exclusive shows as well as repurposed content, to see which short bursts best fit the time consumers have to watch TV on their phones, Mr. Yigit said.

Programmers want to learn how to connect the dots between mobility, communications and video, said John Gauntt, an analyst with eMarketer. "The maverick person or people who will win are those who are able to look at the unique value of mobility and entertainment and distill it into a business proposition that hits the consumer in the face with a 2-by-4 of relevance and `obvious' need," he said.

GoTV received about $15 million in venture capital last year through Bessemer Ventures and Charles River Ventures. GoTV expects to break even at the end of 2007.

By Daisy Whitney
(c) TVWeek