AdMob August 2009 Mobile Metrics Report

AdMob August 2009 Mobile Metrics Report:

• Worldwide iPhone OS marketshare has increased from 33 to 40 percent in the last 6 months, with substantial share in all regions except for Asia and Africa.
• Android is growing rapidly in North America and Western Europe. The HTC Magic (my Touch) is a Top 10 smartphone in both North America and Western Europe. Worldwide requests from Android increased 17% month over month
• Although its marketshare has been declining, Nokia continues to hold 12 of the top 20 smartphone devices in AdMob’s network
• iPhone represented 50 percent of US smartphone usage in AdMob’s network in August 2009, followed by RIM and Android devices at 14 and 13 percent, respectively. Palm Pre captured 9 percent of US smartphone usage.
  

http://metrics.admob.com/2009/09/august-2009-mobile-metrics-report/

Nielsen’s Mobile Video Report: Reach 70% year over year

Nielsen’s Mobile Video Report, Q2 2009, Mobile video, US

• 15 million active viewers(10 million @ 2008)
  

• $308 million in mobile video subscriptions (11% up compared to Q1)
  

"Mobile video is a transformational technology that will require real changes or additions to the consumer media diet. As such, it may have a long way to go before making a dramatic impact on our media economy. When it does, though – when mobile video adoption further dissolves barriers of video’s time and place – the beneficiaries will be those who participated in its evolution, those who anticipated and planned for this demand."

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/the-state-of-mobile-video-promise-vs-progress/

472 Million to Receive Mobile TV by 2013

(c) DigitalTVnews

CAMBRIDGE, UK — The number of people receiving Mobile TV will reach 472 million by 2013 according to an analysis by Cantab Wireless.

Cantab Wireless Ltd has just published an updated analyst report: “Mobile TV – Technologies, Country Cases, and Forecasts for 2009-2013″.

This report argues that subscriber growth is anticipated to be strongest in Asia at first, especially in Korea and Japan. From 2010 onwards, Europe and the USA are expected to catch up. Especially in Europe the shortage of radio spectrum before the analogue TV networks shutdown may delay the launch of mobile TV networks in some countries, most importantly in the UK. Also, from 2012-2013 onwards, cellular operators may start providing mobile TV services via their upgraded LTE networks, which will offer greatly increased capacity. They will become serious competitors to broadcast TV systems. The current economic slowdown will have only a temporary effect on Mobile TV user numbers.

The report includes a thorough review of the various mobile TV standards. However, as the author of the report, Dr Juha Korhonen, points out: “even more important than choosing the right technical standard is choosing the right business model”. It is not yet obvious on how to make money in the Mobile TV business. Various business models have been tried and tested around the world, some successfully and some less so.

Mobile TV business is a contested area between two established businesses, broadcast TV and cellular telephony. TV broadcasters believe that they should be in charge in the Mobile TV business because they are familiar with the TV business, they have established relationships with content producers and they also often have access to physical broadcast networks. Cellular operators, on the other hand, know the business of mobile devices. They have distribution channels for mobile TV receivers, which are often integrated into mobile phones, and they have contract and charging relationships with mobile customers. However, cellular operators typically do not have access to content, and moreover, they cannot provide mobile TV to masses via cellular networks since these networks currently lack the necessary capacity to do it. Therefore, both parties need each other and a successful mobile TV system has to find a business model which benefits both parties.

The report argues that in the medium term, broadcast Mobile TV systems will be popular. However, in the long run, point-to-point Mobile TV channels, delivered via upgraded high capacity cellular networks, will become a more popular service.

Live TV - When I Want It - on My Phone

(c) mobileinsider

On my way back to Silicon Valley, I spent some time reflecting some mobile trend data recently posted in blogs, twitter updates as well as in articles on popular web sites.

Cellular-news reported that “Mobile TV will reach 472 million by 2013” (source: Cantab Wireless). Until now, TV on mobile devices was strictly limited to video clips (downloads) or special devices embedded with tuners, etc. Sprint and Verizon were the early adopters using Qualcomm’s MediaFLO. To add complexity to the TV application, Qualcomm cleared the path for its customers by negotiating TV rights from ESPN and others while buying up spectrum in key markets in North America. This is a costly proposition and is most likely is why TV over Mobile did not take off as predicted in 2006 and 2007.

Recently, I’ve been talking to friends who live in the Bay Area, Boston, San Diego and New York, probing their TV over mobile experience. Most of them make use of 3G PC cards (USB) for wide area connectivity and subscribe to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

Here’s what I found out:

• 1) 25% subscribed to an operator’s TV/video service. Usage was minimal (less than 1 hour per week) because the service was “cumbersome” and limited to the channels and programming supported by the operator.
  
• 2) 50% did not make use of any TV over mobile. Why? “Not interested” or the service options “too expensive and too limited.”
  
• 3) 25% did not subscribe to any service, but was indeed watching live TV (FREE) using their 3G device or 3G USB/PC card (laptop). These people either had Comcast, DirecTV or Dish Network DVR service at home or were users of freeware or beta software from Sling for use with iPhone, Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and/or Samsung Android phones.
  

Here’s the big surprise. Usage was 300% higher than the people who paid for TV over mobile service. Note, these people have unlimited data plans and sure made use of every bit. Usage examples cited.

• · Watch news or sports while at airport (using WiFi or 3G)
  
• · Listen/watch news while driving in car
  
• · Keep the kids quiet in car while driving (let the kids watch kids shows)
  
• · Watch news while waiting for: dentist/doctor/car service/etc.
  

Note: where Wi-Fi was available, the laptop users used free service or service roaming partners of AT&T or T-Mobile to avoid buffering issues.

So, the big lesson for mobile operators and application developers is: do not make people re-learn how to watch TV or video. Much like Nokia found out in the early nineties, it takes 6-7 years for people to re-learn a new format (handset design where # actions button placements is critical). Make it simple. By allowing access to home services (DVR, cable, satellite), more people will watch TV in more places – thus requiring more capacity and better network services. The big question is…why on earth would operators allow this? Because it will happen no matter what so they better prepare for it. I’m sure subscribers would not mind paying a small service fee to access home services or a higher fee if TV channels were provided by the operator’s own servers.

So, building upon my last blog, I’m now convinced that as more people start making use of TV/video services that we are faced with a barrage of data usage where TV, video and personal video casting (IM) will make use of every available bit and spectrum within a service area.

Some mobile data for consideration:

• By 2013, 80 percent of global mobile traffic comes from 3G/4G mobile broadband handsets and laptop users (PC cards). “A single high-end phone like the iPhone/Blackberry generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones. A laptop aircard generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones.”
  
• “Almost 64 percent of the world's mobile traffic will be video by 2013. Mobile video has the highest growth rate of any application category.”
  

Source: Cisco VNI Forecast January 29, 2009.

Video, TV and personal video-casting will happen no matter what we do. 3G and LTE will enable more subscribers accessing more services and using more bandwidth – because they can and will make use of every bit and spectrum available.

So what did I learn? I will use this weekend to download some freeware and start watching TV over my unlimited data plan and if all goes well, I will be watching Duke go to the final four during 'March Madness' – on my 3G phone.

Mobile TV services to generate over USD10 billion in revenues in 2013, claims research

Revenues from Mobile TV services will generate USD1.5 billion in 2008, rising to over USD100 billion in 2012, according to research by Informa Telecoms & Media. At present the revenues are said to be predominantly from subscription fees but this is expected to change over time as the advertising business model starts to gain prominence. Informa believes that by 2013 nearly half of the revenues will come from advertising.

According to Informa, in the next two years, growth is anticipated to be strongest in the pioneering markets of South Korea and Japan before the rest of the world starts to catch up around 2010/2011. Despite isolated success stories in places like Italy and Austria, Europe is not expected to see rapid growth in Mobile TV until 2009. The USA is expected to take even longer as confusion over standards prevents growth. Eventually, concerted momentum behind ATSC-MH is expected to boost the market for mobile TV in North America.

"As the owner of the marketing and billing relationship with subscribers, operators are in the best position to offer mobile TV services", comments Shailendra Pandey, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. "It seems that a good approach for mobile operators will be to start with a free-to-air business model which also involves minimum capital investment. Once user uptake of services starts to grow, operators can then think of developing new revenue models that can be established on top of the free-to-air content platform", adds Pandey.

Most in the industry believed that Mobile TV was going to reach the mass market a lot earlier than has been the case. A number of market and technology barriers have conspired to delay the widespread adoption of mobile TV by consumers and growth in many regions is still fragile.

Research from Informa Telecoms & Media shows that the future of Mobile TV will not be just broadcast or 3G but will be a mix of technologies matched to a mix of audience experiences. 

Source: European communications

Ten-fold growth in mobile TV and video

Broadcasters and consumers will lead an impressive ten-fold growth in mobile TV and video penetration over the next five years but lack of advertisement accountability and system fragmentation will prevent the sector from reaching its full potential monetisation in the near term.

These are the key findings of ‘Mobile TV and Mobile Video, 2nd Edition - A Complete 360-degree Analysis', a new report by NSR, a market research and consulting firm that specialises in satellite and wireless technology and applications.

The report examines market and technology trends influencing mobile TV stakeholders' participation and predicts that mobile TV and mobile video services offered over broadcast and unicast distribution will grow almost ten-fold from an estimated user base of over 57 million at the end of 2007 to 566 million users by the end of 2013.

NSR believes that much of the growth will come from free broadcast services and unicast video as a result of broadcaster involvement in mobile broadcast distribution, 3G network expansion and user/operator involvement in user-generated content (UGC) and web-mobile social networking integration.

The likely upshot is that global service revenues comprising subscription, advertisement and transactional revenue will reach $9 billion by 2013. Advertisement, says NSR, will exhibit the highest growth as a result of the expected proliferation of free broadcast services and ad-supported video.

However, NSR cautions that even though there exists long-term promise in mobile video advertisement, the market is at an embryonic stage of mobile advertisement and adds that by 2013, mobile TV advertisement revenue will still be far from reaching its full potential.

Source: Content2Mobile

@ Mipcom: Eisner Keynote: Content’s Still King (At The End Of A Needle)

By Robert Andrews

Content’s still king and creativity still the crown jewels, regardless of new media, former Disney (NYSE: DIS) CEO Michael Eisner suggested in his keynote at the Mipcom audiovisual market in Cannes. Translation: great stories will succeed whether online or off. 

But Eisner - whose new plaything away from Mickey Mouse’s gaze, Tornante, has funded or started digital ventures like video site Veoh and web drama studio Vuguru - all but forecast the end of the traditional entertainment business… he compared TV bosses to “prehistoric cavemen” whose “oligarchic control over the viewer” will be merely an “infinitesimal moment in time"… 

-- VOD will reign: “Big sporting events will still be big (on linear TV) - but the area of story and entertainment on cable and broadcast will be on-demand. Appointment-to-view TV will be sports and American Idol, but Lost and Desperate Housewives… will have a large proposition of its advertising and viewers on-demand.” 

-- Content is king: Tornante’s focus is online (Vuguru’s initial efforts comprising Prom Queen, other efforts including a web video of a Robin Cook novel), but: “As much as I’ve become enamored with the internet, I continue to have faith in all media. With all due respect to Marshall McLuhan, the message trumps the medium.” He used a confusing analogy - “creativity in a box, think inside the box” - to urge a focus on core fundamentals ... “my message to you is that’s it all about the content”. “You can have all these moguls running around ... saying ‘I’m the king’ - I say they’re not the king; they’re a good queen, but they’re not content.” 

-- A message to old media: “To have a breakdown over new media ... it’s kind of irrelevant - each time you get a new medium, one plus one tends to add up to three. It’s always good for the content player - it’s not always good for the legacy player stuck in a distribution system that’s still valuable but maybe not as valuable as it was before.” 

-- Shrinking world: Channeling not just McLuhan but also Thomas Friedman: “The world has become a single dot, the internet has made it possible for everyone to occupy the same physical space - we’re all standing at the same point on a needle.” 

-- Ad growth: “But he acknowledged that advertising in online video is “still infinitesimal ... you’ll read about a Superbowl final getting millions of dollars for 30 seconds and then I’ll go off and sell an ad on Back On Topps for $500”, referring to the video series being made following Tornante’s acquisition of the sports cards brand. Still, in the future, “millions of dollars will be going to the Back On Topps of the world”. 

-- Vuguru’s next steps: After drawing 20 million views for the first seasons of Prom Queen and Summer Heat, worldwide multilingual spin-offs are following: “The translation actually costs more than the production costs.”

Posted in: Companies, Disney, Conferences, Mipcom

Source

Eisner On Online Video And What ‘Works’: Sex And Sarah Palin; But ‘Story’ Is The Thing

By David Kaplan

Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro climbed on stage at a small theater in Manhattan to introduce a discussion on the changes online video have been experiencing. For its mini-conference, the Veoh Insights Series: Watching The Web, first up was a Q&A between Michael Eisner, the former Disney (NYSE: DIS) CEO and, more recently, founder of The Tornante Company and backer of Vuguru and Veoh, and AdAge’s Brian Steinberg. 

-- What do people want to see: Are we talking about all video? Sex seems to work. User-gen, sports, news, anything with Sarah Palin works. At the end of the day, like in all the other industries from movies to TV, long-form, story-driven content is what ultimately works. But it’s still in the experimental stage. At ABC, we started America’s Funniest Home Video—so this isn’t the first era to watch a man get hit in the groin with a bat. Most of the studio video is repurposed, like Hulu. It makes NBC and News Corp (NYSE: NWS) feel like they’re doing something—I’m not sure it’s the right thing, but they’re doing it well. 

-- Defining quality: Lasting quality starts with script. But it depends on the medium. South Park’s a radio show, basically. Big superhero movies like Batman and Iron Man work great on the big screen. Would it translate to the computer screen? Maybe it would. You can create videos that look like they have production values that are comparable to those big studio projects. 

-- The good old days: When I was a kid on 89th St., the RKO Theater near me had on their marquee, “Don’t watch TV.” But eventually, the media companies got together and TV and movies coexisted. The same when cable came into being. TV and cable started repurposing content, particularly movies and old radio shows. Then, they began to form distinct identities and created their own individual content. 

-- Lead the advertisers: MySpace could dominate video if they figured out how to do it. Part of figuring it out involves attracting the advertisers. It’s easy to get advertisers to move over from TV to Hulu. But for original content, that remains the challenge. But it will come. You can’t let the advertisers lead you, it has to be the other way around. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. When we passed on All In The Family, I thought, so what, there’s only three networks—where are they going to go? That didn’t go over well. More after the jump 

-- Hold off on 30-sec pre-roll: I can’t stand 15-second overlays, but 30 seconds is too much to stand. Product placement is fine, as long as it’s entertaining and doesn’t disrupt too much. The 30-second post-roll is dead too—it’s like watching the credits. No one will stay around for that. Targeting is key. Appointment TV is gone. Targeted audience are here to stay. If you can make an interactive commercial, that would be the way to go. It wouldn’t be annoying and you’d get the people who are interested. 

-- Exclusivity (and back to Palin): Mass audiences are still possible, even on the internet. If I were at ABC, I’d sign up Palin and put her on a show the day after she loses the election. With that wink, she can go a long way. You could put it on Veoh. Why would it not be bigger than on ABC or NBC? It would be on instantly all around the world and if you put it on for just one week and then it was gone—it would be big. When that happens, and you get 200 million people in one week, there will be an exodus from the networks on onto Veoh and Break and others. And the cat on a skateboard? That would just be a small part of it. 

-- One more thing about Palin: The most interesting thing to me about the Katie Couric video, was not the interview, but the comments on it. And some people thought she did fantastic! That’s really interesting. Anyway, those comments can be commercialized.  

Posted in: Advertising, Broadband, Entertainment, Media, TV

Source 

The Operators vs. the Media Brands

(с) GigaOM
Chetan Sharma is co-author of upcoming “Mobile Advertising” (John Wiley) and “Mobile Broadband” (IEEE Press). He is an adviser to several operators and media brands around the world.

Over the last three months, there has been significant discussion around the notion of “open access,” with Apple promising to release its developer kit for the iPhone; Sprint Nextel launching its WiMAX business, XOHM; Verizon Wireless saying it will open up its network and platform; Google’s efforts around Android and a possible gPhone; and the 700 MHz auction. The two massive industries of communications and media/online are clearly at loggerheads. How this battle shapes up over the course of the next few months will define how you and I will consume media, entertainment and information.

Media companies and mobile operators think about customers differently. Operators are focused on subscriber acquisitions, while media companies are fanatic about audience acquisitions. Operators think in terms of adding a few hundred thousand subscribers a month — media companies, of millions. In the Telco 2.0 world, where service providers aspire to become media and entertainment brands, shouldn’t operators be thinking like media companies? Shouldn’t they be more focused on audience acquisition strategies — selling their goods beyond the confines of today’s existing barriers?

If we look at the strategic canvas of the mobile data industry, it’s clear that operators currently have a huge advantage over media brands. Mobile operators’ advantage in the current landscape comes from their superior reach, as well as the capability they have to segment and profile users. Their current influence over the ecosystem is a magnitude ahead of media brands. However, in other areas, such as user experience, content, and the ability to be quick to market — media brands have a stronger strategic footing, and they will use it to close the gap in the other areas.

Too much ink has been wasted on the equation of being a dumb pipe. Dumb does not imply little or no value. For operators, nothing is more troubling than the insinuation that they will be reduced to bit pipes, becoming utilitarians tasked with keeping the streets clean while the media companies zoom past them in their Ferraris. Yet operators need to realize their unique value propositions, come to terms with both what they are great at and not, and structure their monetization strategies accordingly. The growth of the nascent mobile advertising industry is largely dependent on it.

While it is conceivable that some operators can become content and mobile advertising powerhouses, the evidence points us elsewhere. Operators and media companies sit at the exact opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of cultural and media savviness. Mobile operators are very engineering focused and extremely conservative in their approach to the critical operational aspects of running a cellular network. Media companies, on the other hand, come up with the most creative ways to express a brand message in a landscape that would burst the brains of the very brightest network operators with all of its consumer nuances and related myriad creative intricacies.

To be successful over the long term, operators need to focus on the unique elements that only they can provide — such as location, presence, user profiles and platforms for applications; as well as device and network APIs — and build business models around abstracting this information so that the ecosystem can utilize them to enhance user experience and usage. Such an approach will enhance their competitiveness in the media ecosystem, keep the usage and ARPU levels up, and get more entrepreneurs and users involved in moving the industry to its next milestone.

Such an ecosystem will also empower entrepreneurs to keep pushing the boundaries of technical and business innovations to make mobile media and advertising a sustainable, vibrant and scalable industry at a much faster pace — and will help deliver on the promise of “open access” better than any rules in the 700 MHz auction. This shift in mindset (and subsequent execution of the resulting strategy) will have a direct impact on any viable mobile content and advertising strategy. Advertisers look for an audience, precise targeting, and measurement. If operators can help deilver that, then their media strategy will flourish, but if three years down the road, media brands have five times the audience…well you know what happens next.

ROK set to acquire Xero Mobile

Xero Mobile today announced that it has entered exclusive talks to be acquired by ROK Mobile, a UK-based mobile company. The negotiations are taking place as both companies focus on deploying advertising services for college students on mobile phones.

Xero Mobile has developed a revolutionary ad-subsidized mobile phone service featuring the tightly targeted delivery and display of TV-style ads to each handset in return for free airtime. The unique, patented solution enables Xero Mobile to bill advertisers only for ads that are actually viewed, delivering substantially better value for each ad dollar than TV, print or direct mail. The company recently announced its intention to launch an innovative mobile phone service specifically for college students.

“ROK Mobile is focused on bringing to market the same cutting-edge applications targeted to college students that Xero Mobile has worked hard to provide,” said Allan Brown, Xero Mobile president and CEO. “We look forward to joining the ROK team and know that together we have the potential to revolutionize mobile sales and marketing.”

ROK Mobile is part-owned by ROK Entertainment Group, the mobile technology development company best known for it’s TV service streamed over existing 2.5G, EDGE, 3G and wi-fi network.