Mobile News Review,Jamaica - Maybe it's just my liking for a big TV (30 inches and over),a squishy sofa plus the remote,as my typical way of watching Boondocks and VHI Soul, that's made me somewhat cynical about mobile TV.I always asked why would anyone want to watch TV on their frickin mobile phone. Come on. Well now I know. My cynicism and TV watching traditions are being seriously challenged by MiPhone's new service called Brew.
MiPhone's Brew is a suite of paid subscription-based mobile services and applications that range from the typical ring tones, wallpapers, photos, games, news, weather, sports, organizing applications and then there is MobiTV. Now outside of being happy to download a Latin beat ring tone, download and play Tetris, get directions to an old club haunt in Atlanta via Vindigo city guide, I was mostly intrigued by MobiTV.
So I downloaded it and there they were,on all 1¼ inches of my Motorola V262 screen -NBC, MSNBC, Fashion TV, Discovery Channel, Horror Classics and a bunch of other choices- live. I chose MSNBC and Fashion TV and ohh yeah the streamed images were clear and vibrant,(just don't try to read the crawlers. A flawless video flow as seen on TV is just not to be expected right given our bandwidth issues right now. The audio however was crystal,I can see why Apple's iTunes on the mobile phone blew more than a few socks off and why there is also of course MobiRadio.
It's this move towards enabling consumer convenience and changed lifestyle habits, that’s spawned the move to make mobile phone screens and devices like PDAs and PSPs more MobiTV friendly, that is, a more TV like wider and horizontal screen.
It also made me aware of the trends in consumers who are actually using this service globally, Vodafone, the British phone company released the first customer usage figures for its mobile TV services which it offers with broadcaster Sky recently and apparently users have accessed more than one million streams in the first two weeks of going live (it launched on Nov 1). They have 19 mobile TV channels including 24-hour news, sport, entertainment and documentary programmes and the service is free until the end of January.
Then in Asia, a new survey conducted in Korea by research firm Roa Group, more people want to watch TV from mobile phones than from their PCs or devices mounted in cars. The survey found that 61.2% of respondents are willing to watch TV on their phones while only 23.8% will do so on in-car equipment and 23.7% on their PCs.
All this is just further proof about what consumers are like living in this digital world- MoBiTV is just another incarnation of where consumers are now- they want what they want, when they want and wherever they want and any services, product that enables that can win.
So even after the novelty of watching live TV on my phone wore off, there's nothing like convenience to spoil you and get you hooked on a thing. Waiting in line at the bank, stuck in Kingston traffic,flip that phone open and see how much the cost of a barrel of oil is today,play Tetris, watch/listen to Fashion TV, few can resist.
MiPhone's Brew will eventually a prepaid subscription service and you can pay for a single use, multi uses to unlimited use for the Mobile TV services. Which brings me to this, MiPhone which is the 3rd in the mobile market space with just over 100,000 users is hardly a major player with voice services, but it has the potential to be the Apple to Digicel's Microsoft in terms of probably morphing into a boutique mobile brand offering mobile data, content services It's going to be interested to watch.
BREW FACTS
- Has earned publishers and developers over US$350 in revenue so far
- 29 countries are using the service.
INDUSTRY INFO
Keep an eye out on Firestream TV which is a product from DC Digital, Aura Technologies and Cable & Wireless-they are working on IPTV and yep Mobile TV. Local news and music videos on your Mobile phone,it's coming.
Mobile News Review,Jamaica - Maybe it's just my liking for a big TV (30 inches and over),a squishy sofa plus the remote,as my typical way of watching Boondocks and VHI Soul, that's made me somewhat cynical about mobile TV.I always asked why would anyone want to watch TV on their frickin mobile phone. Come on. Well now I know. My cynicism and TV watching traditions are being seriously challenged by MiPhone's new service called Brew.