@ CTIA: News Corp COO: Mobile The Greatest Media Vehicle Ever Created

(c) MocoNews

The first keynote was mobile content hucksterism on a scale you have never heard before. News Corp COO Peter Chernin, bullish after the latest deal buying out majority in Jamba, went on the hype offensive about mobile content. People certainly felt good about being the industry, if nothing else.
"Mobile could be the greatest media vehicle ever created, greater than even television. That's why we bought Jamba.
This JV will create the very first vertically integrated mobile entertainment company. Despite the buzz, we are still only sitting on the precipice of a consumer opportunity no one has ever seen before. We sell things that no one really needs it..it is a completely unnecessary product. But they still crave it. I know how to sell experiences that consumers crave."
Some of his thoughts:
– First, we must create an engaging consumer experience and we should be bolder in personalizing entertainment. We need to fit the needs of a wildly diverse audience.
– We need to be more interactive.
– Mobile should be its own medium. We shouldn't look at it as a marketing channel.
– Make is easy to find: it is a joke to find content on and off the deck presently.
– We need to keep it simple for consumers....choices is good, but not too many.
– We need to standardize technology...we have an urgent need for more standardized handsets.
– We need to market much more imaginatively....just promoting availability does not cut it. We need to establish an emotional connection: communicate ease of use, communicate fun, communicate experience.
– We need to entice advertisers to the largest media platform in the world.
– We must banish the word failure from our vocab, and willing to take risk and try everything.

MySpace: working with Helio and Cingular...talking to all other operators for a mobile MySpace downloadable application.

Simpsons for Jamba: exclusive deal. Perfect match for mobile, and made for mobile. Plans to launch later this year. Exclusive content, not just repurposed, in a subscription model. We'll market the hell out of it and will make customers want it.

@MES: The Games Go On, And On

Мой комментарий:
Тут об играх, но все справедливо и для мобильного ТВ.

(c) MocoNews

This is the last MES panel, as I desperately try and catch up with CTIA...some of the themes that came out of the gaming panel at the end (why are the mobile game panels always at the end of the day?):

Lisa Waits, Head of SNAP Mobile at Nokia, harped on the number of people who don't identify as gamers but play a lot of games, saying it was a "large demographic". Apparently people can play up to 8 hours of games a week and not identify as a gamer.

Another thing that was discussed was the game interface, which is inherently different from the interface that is suited for voice. I'm waiting for a flip phone that has the voice interface on the outside and the gaming interface inside. Mike Yuen, senior director of the Gaming group at QUALCOMM Internet Services, said he thought that converged devices are coming, but not in the way people think. He talked about using the handset has a home entertainment center by plugging it into a TV and a controller, especially for developing nations. I questioned whether a bigger screen and external controller meant that the games on the handset wouldn't be mobile games from mobile game developers but computer or console games instead, and Mike said that mobile would still be a part of that by integrating the game across different platforms. So the game would detect how it was being played and change the UI accordingly (as mentioned by moderator Eric Goldberg). But it's a good point -- even hooked up to the peripherals the phone still has connectivity, which means important parts of the mobile experience are still there.

One thing that came up a couple of times is summarized in this sentence: "This is an operators world, if they don't cooperate they strangle it, they strangle music, they strangle games, they strangle everything." Sean Malatesta, SVP and GM Americas of India Games, said that getting on the carrier deck wasn't a magic bullet. "You have to be smart about it. You live and die with the carriers or without them. I'm probably 90% selling with the carriers, but even when I get on there I've got to do everything I can to get people to buy within the stores," he said. If the games don't sell well and fast, they get removed.

@CTIA: Mobile TV Is The Chiznah...Seriously

(c) MocoNews

OK...if you're one of those people who think that mobile TV won't work because the screen is too small and the quality is too bad, get over to Nvidia's booth (if you're at CTIA) and check out their demo. I just got attracted to their dispaly stand at Mobile Focus from across the corridor because I could see the screen perfectly. Admittedly, it was the most advanced graphics accelerator they had, but combine that with DVB-H (or MediaFLO, although they weren't using that) and you have a very impressive service. At the moment it's the top-end phones...but it will find it's way into the medium market in a year or so, and then it will become standard in almost all phones.
Incidentally, the Nvidia guy said they'd shipped one million of their chips to Italy, for the DVB-H phones -- which isn't the same as saying there's that many in use, of course.

Technorati tags: mobile TV

@ MES: How Expensive Is Mobile TV?

(c) MocoNews

One of the interesting speakers on the "Battle for video mindshare" panel at MES was Joachim Blunck, SVP digital content at Bunim-Murray Productions, who was very focused on the cost of producing the content for mobile TV. When Jordi Aliagas, VP at Arena Mobile, said overseas people liked things they couldn't see on TV, "it has to be something specifically created for mobile", Blunck agreed with him but said "that's a problem, because you can't afford to do it...the first cable networks had to be dirt cheap to compete with television". He questioned whether mobile TV can afford to be specially produced.

"There's a paradox in play here that everyone's ignoring," said Blunck. "There is a handful of major handset manufacturers out there that are trying to get you to buy their handsets, that's their job...Carriers are run by very conservative people, very risk adverse, slowly move the market to where they want. So they go with established networks...Getting mobile specific networks won't happen until someone plunks down a lot of dough, which no-one will do because they don't know what consumers want.' Hence, carriers would just dump current TV on mobile phones, because it's the less risky route.

That wasn't the view of Michael Ramke, VP at Modeo, at the Mobile Digital TV Alliance breakfast. He said that Modeo gets unsolicited offers of content all the time, so while Modeo needs to win with the big guys it has plenty of unique content to choose from to be part of its offering. He said there is far more content available than channels that are technically possible with broadcast TV technology, which is a good place for them to be.

The panel was asked about advertising, and Tom Parrish, SVP in business development at SmartVideo, pointed out that TV and video comes from a background of an advertising business model while mobile comes from a revenue business model. "I believe advertising is going to play a huge role in the market going forward...Carriers make their money on subscription revenue share, so there are advertising trials going on and it's a big power battle going on...carriers take 40% revenue and the advertising model turns that upside down."

Adam Guy, MD of Compete, said that consumer tolerance for advertising on mobile phones is pretty high. "In the US only 35% said no way would they want ads on the cellphone. But they're going to need something for it." This came out at the consumer panel which was held later – even the lady who insisted there was no way she'd accept any kind of advertising on her phone said it would be ok to get some video ads if they were entertaining.

Scott Wills, President and COO of Hiwire, said that overseas studies showed that different people were willing to pay different amounts for mobile TV. "If you can drop the subscription fees to $3 a month and its ad supported you have a huge business," he said.

Technorati tags: mobile TV

@MES: Viewing Patterns On Mobile TV

(c) MocoNews by James Pearce

"It may be overhyped, but so what? If we don't overhype how are we going to drive adoption? People aren't out there clamouring for mobile tv...mobile tv is going to have to be marketed." -- Adam Guy, Compete, Managing Director

The broadcast technologies are coming into the last few months before they launch, kind of where the content MVNOs were a year ago (and I think we can expect much the same response...a year of hype, anti-hype and speculation followed by the claim they've failed a mere month or two after they launch). MES had a "Battle for Video Mindshare" panel.

Anyway, according to Adam Guy, MD of Compete, the interest in mobile broadcast TV has doubled in the past year, judging by the number of people who search for information on the topic on the internet... but it's still only about 1%.

Tom Parrish, SVP at SmartVideo, said the viral sharing of content is important, physically handing around phones in a bar, for example. I'm pretty sure he was talking about promoting the service...Scott Wills, president and COO of Hiwire, said it was important to get past the novelty phase. "The answer is in not showing the clip to somebody. We believe that broadcast TV as opposed to video style clips is going to be one of the things driving adoption...Studies have shown people prefer broadcast TV over clips."

I went to the Mobile Digital TV Alliance's breakfast this morning, and there were similar comments. Michael Ramke, VP at Modeo, said the trend started with people showing the phone to friends, then with watching a few minutes at a time, then went on to appointment viewing, where people know they're going to have half an hour at lunch and use it to watch the phone.

Back to the panel, Wills quoted a lot of statistics from overseas data. About two thirds of people want streaming TV as opposed to around a third who want customized content, and when asked how long they want the show to be only 1.5% say less than five minutes, 32% want content 11-30 minutes long. Around half watch at their home or their office. In regards to a question on recording content, he said that of the 62% of people in Korea who want broadcast mobile TV only 12% want PVR capabilities. Linking that into a comment from Texas Instruments at the breakfast, who said that by 2010 handsets would have 100 GB of storage, enough to record a month of programming so people don't have to miss broadcast shows. If the storage is that good 3G TV solutions will improve because they can be stored on the handset and watched later in higher quality, without the jumping and pixilation they currently have. Wills took a dig at the 3G services, saying "the fact of the matter is the carriers are making a lot of money on it because no-ones watching...they don't measure in terms of hours per day, but in views per week". He said 30% of the people who subscribe don't watch the service at all, or watch it at most once a week, while another 60% watch 1-4 times a week.

Technorati tags: mobile TV

Sprint phones will soon pipe in video news clips

Sprint announced Tuesday that it will create its own sports and entertainment "network" for Sprint mobile phones with daily video news clips on topics that range from fashion to football.

Initially, the "Sprint Power View" service will offer about 25 minutes per day of made-for-mobile videos that emulate Entertainment Tonight and ESPN's SportsCenter. Content will be stored for 24 hours for access on demand.

The content became available Tuesday.

To produce the programming, Sprint has teamed with production company and talent agency IMG Media to hire "anchors" such as former tennis champ Jim Courier and sports broadcaster James Brown and has opened a New York City studio.

Sprint's basic voice packages begin at $30 a month. The add-on Internet packages with unlimited use of Power View range from $15 to $25 a month.

Previously, Sprint — and most of its competitors — have built mobile video offerings with clips from traditional media outlets such as NBC and Fox.

"Historically, it has made sense to repurpose content," says Alana Muller, a Sprint director of product marketing. "But what I believe will ultimately work better is programming that is made for mobile with appropriate camera shots that are more conducive to being seen on the small screen."

Cellphone video is still a "nascent" area, says Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. Yet, he says, consumers will "realize that they can do much more on their phone than just talk."

Golvin says Sprint's edge is that it understands what content works on phones. "Nobody wants to watch Desperate Housewives on a mobile phone," he says, "but they will watch a one- or two-minute clip that has sports highlights or breaking news."

Мой комментарий:
И чем, интересно, sports highlights лучше Desperate Housewives? На мой взгляд - весьма спорное утверждение. Как это, скажем, гольф смотреть на маленьком экране? Хронометраж (1-2 минуты) - да, важно.

Sprint executives see the programming as a way to lower customer churn and lure new users.

"Subscribers that use our services in a meaningful way are ... more likely to stay with Sprint and to tell their friends they're happy with Sprint," says John Burris, Sprint vice president of product development.

The carrier likely will promote other products and services on Power View programming, Burris says. "If we have a Friday movie review, there's no reason we can't link to other content such as Talladega Nights screen savers and ring tones," he says.

The service also gives Sprint an additional outlet for content it already has acquired, such as exclusive video from its five-year, $600 million deal with the NFL.

Down the line, Sprint could also sell ads, Burris says. It hasn't sold any ads yet, but Chase signed on to sponsor its March trial of made-for-mobile video with coverage of the NCAA basketball tournament.

Interview: Lucy Hood, President, Fox Mobile; Stratton Sclavos, CEO, VeriSign

The announcement of a News Corp.-VeriSign Jamba joint venture left a lot of questions unanswered. We can fill in some of the blanks now thanks to a joint interview with Stratton Sclavos, CEO of VeriSign and Lucy Hood, president of Fox Mobile Entertainment. Hood will become CEO of Jamba when the deal closes; Sclavos was in her office on Maple Drive this afternoon.

Why a joint venture? Hood: What we’re all very excited about is designing the world’s first vertically integrated mobile entertainment company. You’ve got content and marketing and product integration in terms of advertising and so on from News Corp. VeriSign stands for technological excellence and Jamba is a great example of that, a platform that delivers content to 30 countries in languages that reach a billion people. Sclavos: We also believe this is the start of what’s going to be a great collaboration, many more new products and many more new opportunities are going to be in the future and we both have a lot to bring as a partner. We’ve worked long and hard on this and we’ve known each other for some time. …
Would you have been able to sell Jamba as a whole? Sclavos: Certainly. We had several other offers to do that; we were not interested. We really wanted to develop the integrated approach to the market and have what we believe was the strongest partner in the space given the assets that News Corp. is launching right now.
You had a vision for the company when you acquired it (in 2004) and things didn’t quite pan out… what will make this better for Jamba than the past couple of years have been? Sclavos: I think as Peter Chernin has said, News Corp. has a relentless focus on the consumer and they have great content creation, they have great ability to build brands and capture customer loyalty. Those were not strengths of the VeriSign corporation. We bring … the technology and the infrastructure and the ability to have the global footprint to deliver all these new and interesting ways and all these new handsets. If you put it together, it’s a pretty interesting combination.
You still see a lot of potential and a lot of growth in the market? Sclavos: I think what people have to remember is we’re only a couple of years into this and our expectation is most of the opportunity is ahead of us and probably for the next decade or so. Think of what’s going to happen on the network … with devices, and how entertainment on these devices is really going to be probably the main driver of what people use their mobile devices for. We think this is a pretty exciting time to have a front seat.

How was the value arrived at? Sclavos: There were many tangibles and intangibles … including News Corp.’s ability to bring additional value to the relationship through their content like The Simpsons and their other properties like MySpace … Certainly the financial piece had both some amount of traditional external metrics as well as what we believe were the intangible assets.
How is this going to set up? What brands survive? Does Fox Mobile disappear? Hood: The new company will combine Jamba, Fox Mobile Entertainment and Mobizzo. Obviously, what we would do is migrate all the Mobizzo content to the Jamba and Jamster portals. That’s how we’ll approach the branding. We’re working on developing areas like MySpace. We actually have Simpson’s content ready to go so that will be a very exciting launch, which you’ll see on a global basis.

A lot of people don’t understand the relationship between Fox Mobile Entertainment and FIM. Can you explain a little bit? Hood: Fox has three digital verticals: Fox Interactive Media headed by Ross Levinsohn; Pay TV/VOD headed by Pete Levinsohn and then I oversee Fox Mobile Entertainment. First of all, we’ve collaborated for years and we have more meetings together than we do apart because clearly you’re seeing a lot of convergence in this world. At the same time, my group has a laser focus on the mobile market and the way we describe that is reaching subscribers through carriers around the world. Since there are two billion of them, we think it’s a pretty sizeable market. … You’ll see specific collaborations, like the fact that Jamba will be MySpace’s m-commerce partner. Exclusively. … Any kind of content you want to get via your MySpace page on your mobile phone — and there’s quite a lot of it — will be sold through our platform.
Stratton, was that one of the appeals to you? The ability to tap right away into this large marketplace that Fox Interactive has developed? Sclavos: Of course it was. … First of all, it’s the pre-eminent community-based site and for the demographic that is going to be the mainstream demographic for mobile entertainment, they are today on MySpace … They are doing new things every day, they’re including things like user-generated content … I think that their expertise here and the community that they’re continuing to build, especially now that they’ve started to roll it our internationally, it’s really one of the most significant things we are hoping to learn from them.

You mentioned keeping Jamster and Jamba? How do you have those two co-exist? Will it be Jamster for the U.S., Jamba everywhere else? Hood: Jamba is one of the most recognized brand names in Europe. In countries like Germany and The Netherlands, it’s got 99 percent brand awareness so that’s very powerful. We also happen to really like the name Jamster, which is the English-language brand for Jamba. We’re strategizing and planning how these will roll out in the future. You’ve got two very strong brand names and that’s a great asset to bring to a partnership.

You were very excited about Mobizzo and the prospects for that? What happened? Hood: What happened is m-commerce is still in its early stages. We created a lot of good content for Mobizzo; Family Guy sold extraordinarily well. Our original product line did extremely well as well. But we really wanted to roll out faster on a global basis and, let’s face it, we were in one territory and Jamba is in 30. We wanted to be across multiple continents now.
If you hadn’t done this acquisition, would you have been in the position of deciding whether or not Mobizzo continues to exist? Hood: No. … The company’s very committed to building a direct-to-consumer business in the mobile sector … We’ve just accelerated our activities with this partnership with VeriSign.

More acquisitions coming from the JV or are you going to work with what you have for now? Sclavos: I think we should close the venture first. I think we both believe it’s a huge opportunity and the partnership gives us a platform to do great things.

(c) MocoNews

Мой комментарий:
Сделка выглядит просто фантастически удачной для VeriSign не смотря на кажущийся небольшим P/Е (чуть больше единицы) и особенно на фоне почти двукратного падения продаж Jamba/Jamster: они получают доступ к огромным медиаресурсам News Corp (особенно интересен MySpace.com и его самогенерящийся контент) и на оставшейся у них 49% доле очень неплохо заработают, особенно - учитывая бурное желание News Corp развивать направление мобильного контента.

Advertisers look to mobile phones as users seek free TV

Advertising on mobile phones is expected to boom over the next five years, creating a market worth more than $11.3bn (£6bn) annually, with consumers persuaded to accept adverts on their handsets by the offer of free content such as TV channels, games and music.

With mobile phone ownership already outstripping PC use across the world, online advertising players such as Google and Yahoo! are moving their search engine products on to mobile phones. But research by industry experts Informa Telecoms and Media, to be released today, shows that advertising-backed content services such as mobile TV will also be a draw for advertisers.

The move from demanding that customers pay when they download music or videos to free services backed by advertising, however, represents a challenge to mobile phone operators. They had been hoping to charge for content and levy monthly subscription fees for mobile TV. If they cannot persuade broadcasters or music firms to cut them in on advertising-backed services, they risk becoming little more than access providers.

Informa estimates that the mobile advertising market, forecast to be worth $871m this year, will rocket to $11.35bn in 2011. While that is a small percentage of the global advertising market, growth is expected to be fast. Mobile search advertising and display advertisements on mobile web pages will account for about $3.1bn by 2011, with text and picture messaging advertising raking in $2.7bn, it says.

But Informa says advertising over mobile TV will be most lucrative, worth almost $4.4bn by 2011. Virgin Mobile will today launch Britain's first "true" broadcast mobile TV service, offering a handful of channels over mobiles at the same time as they go out on TV. It is expected to eventually charge a subscription fee. But Informa's head of mobile content, Dan Winterbottom, said "people do not want to pay for something they can already watch at home for free".

So mobile TV is expected to become free, paid for by advertising. During the World Cup, mobile phone operator 3 offered a free downloadable video magazine show paid for by Canon with advertising. 3 says the campaign had 61% recall.

There are still some hurdles. 3 has a deal with ITV to simulcast ITV1 to mobile phones. But because of content rights issues, it has had to cut the advertisements.

(c) The Guardian

Technorati tags: mobile TV

Jupiter: Consumers Want Free Mobile Video

Just a day after Sprint adds pay-per-view movies to its mobile phone offering, Jupiter Research comes out and says consumers just aren't keen on paying for mobile video.

Occasionally, the ironies of the technology industry are just too much to bear. Not even 24 hours after mobile operator Sprint announced it was now offering pay-per-view downloadable movies to its high-speed moble phone customers, market analysis firm JupiterResearch announces a new study which finds that, although some consumers are interested in getting video on their cell phones, they generally aren't interested in paying for it.

According to Jupiter, roughly 11 percent of mobile phones will be video-capable in 2006, and 25 percent of consumers are interested in receiving video on their mobile phones. But only one percent of mobile subscribers will pay for a subscription to mobile video services this year.

"This high level of interest demonstrates that there is market potential," said Julie Ask, Research Director at JupiterResearch an lead analyst on the study. "Service providers will need to give consumers context for watching TV on a small screen in order to convert interest into paid subscriptions. Given current consumer resistance to paying, the most plausible business model for carriers to adopt is one that combines paid and ad-supported mobile video subscriptions."

According to the report, consumers interested in mobile video mostly want live live television on their mobile phones, followed by full-length movies (WTF?), short video clips, and pre-recorded television shows.

In a surely unrelated development, across the pond in the U.K., BT Movio just announced it plans to bring television broadcasts from BBC One, ITV1, and Channel 4 to mobile phones via Virgin Mobile beginning in October, although some sports events, films, and American television programming won't be in the lineups. Cost: free if you're already paying £25 a month or more, otherwise £5/month and £199 for a video and DAB-radio compatible handset.

(c) Digital Trends News

Technorati tags: mobile TV

AT&T launches America's first internet TV service

America's largest telecoms company, AT&T, will today launch an internet TV service that will stream content to viewers over their wireless or fixed-line broadband connections. The service will cost $20 per month, on top of broadband connection charges of $12.99.. The telecommunications giant said the service is being offered in the US in partnership with TV content provider, MobiTV.

AT&T Broadband TV, the first service of its kind in the US, will initially offer 20 channels of cable and TV specifically made for broadband. The firm said new channels and other content will be added regularly.

Doug York, AT&T's senior vice-president of programming said the service is part of the firm's strategy to bring a "digital lifestyle" into the mainstream. To realise those plans York said AT&T needed to capture "all three screens", meaning the PC, TV and mobile phone screen.

Potentially, AT&T could tap into more than 8 million American homes by convincing existing broadband customers they need broadband TV and is kicking off a two-week free trial of the service to entice customers.

The move is part of an aggressive strategy that will see AT&T construct America's first purpose-built "internet TV network", according to York. That strategy will set the telecommunications giant on a collision course with cable operators who have traditionally dominated TV provision there.

According to new research from research firm Telephia, the American mobile TV audience grew by 45 per cent to 3.7 million subscribers in Q2. Mobile TV revenues surged 67 per cent to $86 million during Q1 06.

(с) Telecoms.com

Technorati tags: mobile TV, internet TV

@MES: The Mobile Threat To Broadcasters

(c) MocoNews by James Pearce

I just had lunch beside Paul Rich, CEO of Bennett Media, which produces content based on extreme sports and women that it sells to broadcasters. It's not on mobile yet -- Paul is here to work out how to get it on mobiles as part of a new media strategy, the ulitmate goal of which is to start its own network. The idea is to use mobile, internet, Google video and everything to cross-promote, and to release free videos for users to pass around and recommend as part of a promotional effort. This fits in with my suspician that the trend of content producers (such as Bennett, or wire services) to launch D2C products is a threat to broadcasters, which goes further since Bennett seeks to use the new media to launch its own network.

The Myth Bustin' Paul Reddick

(c) MocoNews

The Billboard Mecca event started at Weston Bonaventure this morning to a packed crowd. After a funny Ricky Bobby by Paul Reddick, the VP at Sprint, he talked about some of the myths of mobile content.
Myth #1: Carriers are strictly content distributors. We need to be original programmers..it will help us become better partners.
Myth #2: Technology is the biggest limiting factor. We don't have time for that.
Myth #3: Mobile entertainment is just portable entertainment.
Myth #4: Mobile TV is nothing more than "Tiny TV".
Myth #5: Repurposed content alone will do. User-gen: it is made for mobile, and mobile is made for it. For marketers: quit using mobile as a marketing vehicle for big screen. The point is to entertain and entice customers here and now, with original content.
Myth #6: Mobile entertainment has to be commercial fr*ee. Partnering with Enpocket for mobile advertising...the rumor is true.
Mtyh #7: Customers won't pay premium for the convenience of "now". Sprint music store: We took a lot of heat on pricing. We are well past 5 million downloads at $2.50 a pop.
Myth #8: Mobile entertainment markets itself. We need entertainment industry to make mobile part of the message. Recommendation engines are beginning to take off, so is gifting.
Myth #9: Carriers are inhibiting market growth and don't care. We add a lot of value by building customers, platforms etc. Our interests are aligned and we are looking to creatively partner.
Myth #10: Nevermind.

Technorati tags: mobile TV

CTIA: News Corp. Buying 51 Percent Of VeriSign's Jamba For $187.5 Million

News Corp, in search of a strategy on the mobile side of things after pioneering some early efforts in mobile content, has bought a majority (51 percent) of Verisign-owned mobile content firm Jamba/Jamster, for about $187.5 million. The site Jamba will be merged with News Corp's own lukewarm mobile content site/service Mobizzo. Jamba brand name is used in Germany and other European countries... Jamster is used in UK and U.S.. According to the WSJ, the merged company will keep the better-known Jamba name; Fox Mobile Entertainment president Lucy Hood will be CEO. VeriSign, which acquired Berlin-based Jamba in 2004 for $266 million, will keep 49 percent. The acquisition never really fit with VeriSign but should fit right in with Fox's ambitious mobile sales plans.
This is not the Fox Interactive Media side; this is the FEM side which doesn't really work with FIM (political issues internally)... Fox Interactive has a separate mobile division, headed by John Smelzer.
Jamba's mandate: as explained in the WSJ story, it will be to primarily increase Fox mobile presence in Europe and other places, where Jamba has traditionally been strong. Among its first offerings will be ringtones, wallpaper and short clips from "The Simpsons," available for a yet-to-be determined monthly subscription fee next year. In addition, Jamba will sell content through MySpace.com, which means that it will come out of the FIM pie.
Jamba division generated about $500 million last year, but this year has been brutal, and will fall to about $300 million, according to Verisign expectations, due to European troubles as we have detailed here before.

(c) MocoNews as rewright from WSJ

Interview: Orange’s mobile TV boss Deborah Tonroe on the operator’s revamped new service

Mobile TV is all the rage, whether it’s watching Corrie on your phone, catching up with X Factor backstage action, or testing whether Big Brother still makes your teeth champ with foaming rage once it’s been shrunk down for a two-inch screen (answer: yes).

Orange was quick off the mark with its mobile TV service, launching it in May last year. But the operator has recently revamped the service to work on more handsets, with new pricing options and fresh channels – including Aardman Animations, the people behind Wallace & Gromit.

To find out more, I talked to Deborah Tonroe, head of TV and video for Orange UK. She explained what’s with the changes, which channels are most popular, and why she doesn’t think the DAB technology used by Virgin Mobile for its mobile TV service isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

What’s with the refresh – what’s new?

The fundamental change we’ve made in the last month is to roll Orange TV onto a new platform, which means it’s now available on 14 different handsets, with new ones coming out all the time.

Before, we were on just three Nokia handsets, so this opens the product up to a lot more new customers. Our ambition is to have it on every 3G handset that we launch, although occasionally you’ll find one that isn’t capable.

Also, users used to have to download an application and install it on their phone to watch Orange TV. This new one runs off the Orange World portal, so you go in, click on TV & Video, choose the packages of content and off you go. You don’t have to do anything technical to get started with the service.

You’ve also introduced some new pricing packages, haven’t you?

Yes, that’s the third main change. We always had a £10 pack which let you watch 20 channels. We still have that, it’s called the Max Pack. But we also have two new packs that cost £5 each. The Mix Pack has nine channels – Kiss, Eurosport, FHM, Aardman Animations, My Movies, ITN News, Channel 4 Mobile, Bravo and Living TV. And then the Music Pack has Smash Hits, Kerrang and Kiss TV.

People can chop and change if they want to: you don’t have to stick to the same pack throughout your contract. And we’ll be launching more packs in the coming months, which I can’t talk about just yet!

We’re also seeing some great new content coming onto the platform. Eurosport is great, and for the industry it’s a good thing to see synchronous live channels going onto mobile. If you’re out and about, live sport is something you don’t want to miss.

And then Aardman Animations have just got into mobile in a big way with their channel. Their content really does lend itself to mobile, as it’s in short bursts and makes you laugh.

What are people watching on Orange TV? What’s popular and what’s not?

There haven’t been too many surprises, as the type of customer using this service tends to be the early adopters on 3G, so it’s a younger audience. Music is very popular, and also news.

It’s fulfilling those two requirements – people are bored and on the move, so they want to be entertained, which is where the music channels come in. And then they want to be informed and have some live content, which the news channels provide. The live element of ITN and CNN have been very popular.

Are the made-for-mobile channels popular, or do people just want to watch the channels they know from regular TV?

To begin with, people are looking for names they know. But look at what Channel 4 have done. Channel 4 is a made-for-mobile service, and it’s got Green Wing and Lost there, programmes that you know. But they know mobile viewers won’t watch an hour of Lost, so they’ve created a different channel for mobile.

That, tied to the brand that people know, drives uptake. People are also taking this as an opportunity to do something new.

One of the frustrating things about mobile TV is that it seems to be just copying the way normal TV works: there’s a schedule, so you have to tune in at a certain time to watch the show that you want. Isn’t that a bit backward-looking?

It’s true that mobile TV has been defined by certain sections of the industry as being an asynchronous stream of what you can get at home. I don’t believe that’s what customers are looking for. They want to be entertained in a quick and easy-to-use fashion.

You might have more time at home to search through a database of programmes to find what you want, but on mobile, the desire to be entertained needs to be a lot faster.

Our role as an operator, and an aggregator of content, is to make that experience as pleasant as possible. We will recommend content for the passive viewer, but we also have our video catalogue of over 5,000 videos to choose from. So it’s a combination of the two that’ll help customers get what they want.

There’s been huge change in the broadcasting industry. Customers now decide what they want to watch, and when they want to watch it. Kids don’t understand the phrase ‘not on’. They’re used to watching what they want, when they want. For mobile, we have to recognise that this revolution is already happening. We can’t look backwards.

Virgin Mobile launched their mobile TV service yesterday, and it uses the DAB technology rather than streaming over 3G like you and the other operators. Why haven’t you gone for that method?

The main limitation is that you have to go out and buy a specific DAB handset to access the service. For us, TV is something you need to be able to provide on a variety of handsets. Customers are still making their buying decision based on this being a communication device, and then think about what extra elements they can add onto that.

It’s quite a tall ask to say to somebody ‘Do you want to buy a TV phone?’. We’d rather take the view that if you want to buy a Nokia or a Motorola, fine, let’s add TV to those handsets.

Also, another problem with DAB is the limitation on the number of channels that you can watch, up to six I think. I think customers are going to be more demanding about the variety of channels. The six channels you want to watch may be different to the six that I want to watch, for example. So those are the two core reasons we didn’t feel it was right to go down the DAB road.

Are we ever going to get more interactivity in mobile TV? For example, the ability to text into programmes, vote and so on?

There’s a real ambition to do that, and it would open up lots of opportunities around advertising and programming. But I’ve yet to see anything that’s worked well enough at this stage, so I don’t know how far away it’s going to be.

It’s not for the lack of ideas from programme-makers, that’s for sure. All these gaming channels and those sorts of companies see mobile TV as an opportunity. But we need the technology that allows you to do two things at once on your handset: watch TV and send a text message into the programme. It’s that, rather than any creative issues, which needs to be solved.

So what’s next for Orange TV?

We’ll still be developing new packages and new content. We’re doing some quite interesting deals with a number of content providers, although I can’t say who just yet.

Are these exclusive deals? Is that a big factor in mobile TV, trying to sign up certain broadcasters or production firms to be only on Orange TV?

Most channels are looking for distribution across all the operators. And to be honest, from what I’ve heard, most operators don’t feel that exclusive channels are something that’s important to the offering.

We’re looking to provide a bundle of services to customers, and to differentiate Orange across the experience, and from the range of services we can offer, rather than from having individual channels exclusively. It’s very difficult to get exclusive channels to work, particularly for the content partners.

Vodafone tried it with Sky. Last Christmas, it was all about ‘Get Sky only on Vodafone Live…’

Yes, well, the term exclusive can also be used when you have a partner but no one else is taking your service. That’s all I’ll say...

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