Sky Player and the apps…now what next?

The company is giving nothing, telling followers @SkyMobile that they should keep an eye on the iTunes store in a coupe of weeks for more details.

Sky already released 3 iPhone apps : Sky News, Sky Sports Live Cricket and a Sky+ PVR remote.

Maybe we will see an app for booking or VOD Catalog app…let’s keep an eye on the app store.

The Sky Player is: “the home of Sky TV – but online. For anyone. Hundreds of Sky Movies plus loads of top TV titles. Available right now. You don’t even need a Sky dish! Want more information?” That is how they advertize it…at least on their website.

Doesn’t this sound like a defensive move to you…

Do you Sling? …I do

An article from the NyTimes talked about the future of Sling Media and its flag-ship product: the Sling Box.

The editor starts by a glimpse on what could be heaven for a TV fan:

Technology evangelists and television aficionados want all their TV on the Web, and they are tired of waiting for Internet companies and content owners to make it happen.

But such an entertainment nirvana already exists — at least for owners of a silver and black gadget called the Slingbox.

Why Sling Box was created? The basic need covered by the SlingBox was the ability to watch your favourite content anywhere i.e watching the NFL/NHL finals when abroad, outside of your home or in another country. And I knew some Americans living in Singapore using Sling Boxes of friends in the US to watch their favorite sports events.

Mobile Marketing and Video

I came accross this great article about Mobile Video. It is from Dave Sloan marketing Director of Avot media.

He gives 5 ways where video is critical for mobile:

1. Watching and sharing a video from a mobile web site

2. Sharing video via social networks

3. Sharing video from desktop to mobile

4.Viewing live videos from a mobile web site

5.Viewing video content in a mobile application

Indeed, on point 2, more & more buzz videos are coming from friends post on social network. One of your friend posts a video that you want to share with your other friends then you just post it on your FB wall…and if the video is good the buzz starts!

On Hulu moving to Cellphones, Driving mobile video usage

Hulu has done well as a browser-based video destination. In march 2009, it reached he third position in video internet website with 2.6% market share. (which is good but still really far behind Youtube, 40% market share). With Newscorp and NBC Universal as shareholders, Hulu is a promising start-up. Hulu aims to provide free and legal content sponsored by advertising to users. More recently, Disney just joined the investors enabling TV series like “Lost” or “Desperate Housewives” from ABC available on the network.

So, it’s not surprising to hear that Hulu is headed to cell phones. An anonymous mobile industry executive says the video service will soon appear on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, according to Business Insider.

Nokia sells its Mobile Broadcast unit to…Wipro

An earthquake in the Mobile TV broadcasting happened today:

Nokia confirmed to Reuters today that it has sold its enterprise-focused mobile TV unit to India-based Wipro. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Although mobile TV has struggled to take off, the sale of the unit does not necessarily mean that the world’s largest handset-maker has become uninterested in the sector. A Nokia spokesperson told Reuters: “We wanted to focus on the consumer side of things, the mobile TV client in the devices, rather than on the business-to-business side.” The Mobile Broadcast Solutions unit had about 40 employees was more focused on the back-end. It created software and hardware which enabled the mobile TV technology on the phone to search for and access a broadcasting network.

To me, this move means:

• end of the battle for mobile TV broadcasting from an handset perspective
  
• the rising of mobile (web) TV i.e mainly through 3G, wifi
• an open space for broadcasting TV to mobile with ATSC M/H, DVB-T/H; ISDB-T/M; DVB-SH; CMMB…
• maybe the end of mediFLO or the sell of FLO division of QUALCOMM to another indian IT supplier…

I do not get why WiPRO would be interested in that division…unless they only looking at getting skills in Broadcasting in general?

Mobile 2.0 Paris March 10th

From an overall perspective today was very intense and the speakers were interesting and some of the panelists were extremely sharp and pinpointing the right issues (Jerome Bouteiller, Frederic Dumeny). One of the major challenge I found is to take out from our minds that Mobile users are not always PC users and that services need to be conceived only for a mobile usage! I think that in some cases comparison with the web makes no sense… Take the e-commerce, it’s been years users are downloading ringtones with premium SMS, or are using paid adult services and this is truly a mobile service.

I am going to give some remarks on the different panel I attended:

1. Widgets Panel

Duality between Applications (connected apps reachable in 1 click and widgets in container what webwag or goojet is doing reachable in more than 2 clicks) and Widgets Containers. What I understood at the end, by discussing with WebWag is Widgets in a container is targetting Joe “The Plumber” and Maggie “the Hockey Mum” i.e low-end mobile phone users.

Container of usual services (weather, news, mails, social networks, local information, traffic) target low-end phones and provide a very easy and intuitive way of consuming information. How do they make money by providing White Label widgets to companies, Revenue Sharing on advertising, or Value added services.

I, now, understand why VCs are so attracted by these companies.

2. Mobile Advertising Panel

Nothing really new. There is a strong shift towards the mobile internet from the brands. Applications are a hot topic.

Nevertheless the environment is still very complex, no tracking system (though marvellous, nokia interactive, microsoft, sofialys, phonevalley are implementing solutions). Cellfish summed up very well: bottom line what still work pretty well today is Push SMS.

All the panelists saw a strong demand in Geolocalization.

3. Mobile Social Network

I was very disappointed by this Panel, as the panelists did not speak too much of Social Network…Gemalto released their new Multimedia SIM Card, project name UPteq.

I am suprized by Orange, they are very proactive in different mobile services areas with my Social Place, Jingo and of course Studio 34 their content arm.

4. 2 Platforms, 2 Strategies: Iphone vs Android

The best Panel by far.

Visuamobile created 18 apps, have more than 1 Million download, 14 persons, 9 developers, 11 servers and 200 mb of bandwidth.

There is a problem of Search Engine Optimization on the app store – not a new topic but so true… Visuamobile manged to drive traffic through PR with bloggers, newspapers online and offline…

I discussed also with Mr Silberzahn from Digital Airways. It was a pleasure talking to him, as I guessed this company is healthy, well managed and have good on-going projects. For him Android is the way to go, it is a fact most of their new projects are on Android. DA specializes on developing UI on any devices, Mobile, Netbooks, Set Top Boxes and PND. Historicly their competitors are Purple Labs vs Streamezzo or Bluestreak (client lead solution)

5. mCommerce

Same comment as for the Mobile Social Network…it was very bad we did not talk about true transaction based model implemented in Europe whether in NFC or through Mobile Operators. I am thinking of Austria, Germany….or even the best example which is M-Pesa in Kenya where fishermen sold their fish before coming back to the harbour…

Mobile World Congress 2009

My feedback of the show:

1. Openness: a lot of companies opened their platform and now provides API for developers to work on it. (myGamma…)
2. Applications stores: Nokia, Samsung, Orange, SFR…all of them are opening app stores! Guess it will be harder for the users to understand what will happen!
3. Mobile Widget or mobile connected applications: Qualcomm through Plaza are strongly ahead. Operators are also interested Orange. In their recent announcement it was said by the end of 2009 80% of their mobile “signature range” will be sold with new widgets. Also worth to mention are companies like Goojet (financed by american and french VC), webwag…
4. Green: The universal charger initiative (without Apple…though it is predictible) – the Solar Energy phone designed by Samsung and LG. Nokia got an award for an Outstanding Environnmental Contribution (more info here)
5. Mobile Advertising: admob! admob! admob! and a mobile company that does affiliation for mobile web site! texomobile already more than 130 000 affiliates! Sybase released a mobile advertising platform that allows content providers, publishers, and enterprise to insert text ad into a SMS
6. Mobile Payment: Mobile payment englobes 3 different notions nowadays: mBanking, mCommerce and mRemittance. Tranfer money to your friends or relatives in your home country, several experiences launched with the Philippines operators, namely Globe. A leader in that space is a German company called Paybox (recently acquired by Sybase 365). Maxis have a great mRemittance system with Transfer To Explanation of the service: “Hotlink i-Share is a first-in-Malaysia service by Maxis that was launched in April this year and enables its prepaid subscribers to share airtime credit with their friends and family to several countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines through an easy-to-use “shared top-up” application…”
7. New mobile phones: I will only mention one: The G2 which apparently is close to perfection…what a plan!

And to finish the list of the awards and their winners! One remark in the Champion for Global Award Mobile Innovation we find a chinese company which is great as more and more I think that innovation in the mobile space will come from Asia!

Best Mobile Game: Winner: Gameloft – Real Football 2009

Best Mobile Music or Video Service: Winner: BBC iPlayer on Mobile

Best Mobile Advertising Service: Winner: Turkcell – Tonla Kazan

Best Mobile TV Service: Winner: MobiTV – MobiTV

Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service Winner: Vodafone – Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited

Best Mobile Internet Service: Nokia – Nokia Sports Tracker

Best Mobile Money Service: Safaricom and Vodafone – M-PESA

Best Mobile Handset or Device:
INQ – INQ1
Highly Commended: Nokia – Nokia E71
Highly Commended: T-Mobile – T-Mobile G1

Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development: Nuance Communications – Airtel-T9 India Consumer Vernacular Messaging Campaigns

Best Service Delivery Platform: NewBay Software – LifeCache Social Networking Solution 2.0

The Green Mobile Award: Smart Communications – Alternative Power for Cell Sites program

GSMA’s CEO Award for Outstanding Environmental Contribution: Nokia

Government Leadership Award: The Government of France

THE 2009 MOBILE INNOVATION GLOBAL AWARD CHAMPION: Cootek, China (Most Innovative Wireless Dev)

DTV Tuner for iphone…ideas for Europe’s DTV

Japanese carrier Softbank released a kit that is both a TV-tuner and an additional battery pack for the iPhone. According to the above-mentioned source, Softbank’s TV tuner and battery pack will include an internal Wi-Fi module and external antenna for tuning in to the One-Seg (1seg) mobile terrestrial broadcasting service. The cost is at 100$US/Pack.

The receiver is supposed to stay in users’ purse or pocket, but it can also connect to iPhones via the dock connector. This is where the TV-tuner’s second nature kicks in, acting as a secondary battery for the iPhone. “Around 3 hours” of continuous One-Seg viewing time is advertised.

The signal will be available in Japan and parts of Brazil and it will be delivered to iPhones via Wi-Fi through a specialized application launching soon on the iTunes App Store. iPhone users will be able to visit the venue and download the app free of charge.

In terms of digital TV, the standard supported by this TV Tuner is the ISDB-T (more information on oneseg). This TV standard is a Terrestrial Digital TV Standard such as DVB-T. There are only two countries who have approved this standard: Japan and Brazil.

In Japan there is approximately 500k iphones (source). In Brazil there are maximum 200k iphones (source).

It means that Softbank is launching a product with a market size of 700k and, I imagine they are looking at a growth of 10% per year which means a market size of 1 Million in 4 years time. With a 5% penetration they will get 5 MIllion $.

The question now is how long should we wait to see such a device with a DVB-T Tuner! Market size is much much bigger (as free DVB-T is available in almost all western countries).

Who can possibly do this device: a partnership between DVB-T specialist such as Teamcast/Dibcom and a specialist in mobile development & integration (e.g Atelier) could work together and launch a device for a mobile operator such as SFR. (as usually there are the first to release new services in France)

The other big question is: Will DVB-H ever be in the iphone?

DVB-H in South East Asia

For the past 3 years MobieTV is Communic’Asia’s hot topic.

The question on eveyone’s mind is: What is really going on in the region with DVB-H?

Singapore:

• M1+ Mediacorp with Alcatel-Lucent {Samsung Phone} is the only one with a true business model IMHO.
• PGK + Zentek with Nokia…where is the business model?
• Innoxius who is just showing off an interesting technology: their small integrated BTS is really nice!

Philippines:

• Smart with Nokia they have around couple of thousands of users.
• PMSI with… do not know exactly what they are up to but heard that the company was not in a good shape…

Malaysia:

• U-Mobile launched with Nokia but I do not have any numbers

Indonesia:

• 1 Trial with Cominfo done with Thomson & Nokia

Vietnam:

• Launch by VTC with Nokia

Thailand: at least 1 Trial

Are users gonna watch TV on their phone? I’m guessing that they’ll be more likely to watch video on the phone with the following service provided:

• time-shifting TV
• mobile VOD
• mobile Video Podcasts

Live will only be watched when nothing else {TV, Internet} is available…

Communic Asia & Broadcast Asia 2008

Communic’Asia ended last week – what I will remember of this edition:

• less and less people in Broadcast Asia, all the company that was previously exhibiting at BA are now turning to Communic Asia…
• more and more people at LG & Samsung Booth…guess why!
• Software encoding {Met with Atomiz looks very promising} Indeed more and more players are entering the video game, thanks to the Web & IPTV…. Any website can now be a media therefore can have its own TV Channel!
• Conferences were very interesting, discussion about sustaining communities was pretty instructive;
• Surprising! Broadcasters are aware that they have to deal with a shift in the consumption of TV from their audience however they are NOT taking any serious actions.

As a conclusion this Communic Asia was as usual, see couple of friends and industry player, got couple of leads and overall it was not that exciting…