Mobile TV Price Tag Too High for Most?

Is cost a major factor when it comes to cell phone-based mobile television. If the results of a recent survey are any indication, most consumers are very concerned with the current and proposed price tag of get-up-and-go media. More than 70% of the respondents in a survey conducted by Tellabs and M:Metrics said that cost of service is a major consideration in mobile TV, and one that far outpaces picture quality, screen size and even available channels.

Once users get a taste of the mobile life, however, they are more apt to be concerned with things like picture quality, notes the survey, which included respondents from the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Although many users choose to cut and run once they subscribe to mobile TV services, whether it is due to the high cost or poor channel selections, says another survey of 22,000 European users that revealed more former mobile TV fans than present subscribers (by about 19%).

The two surveys and others bring out some interesting points about the current and future state of mobile TV: Are these services too expensive for the mass market, or is there just too little good content to keep subscribers interested and willing to pay for more? We think it may be more than latter than the former, since the cable industry has shown that most people are willing to pay a lot extra for some really good content - be it the latest world title fight or a new season of The Sopranos.

The M:Metrics study also showed that up to 24% of mobile TV/video service subscribers stopped using it because of quality and reliability issues, 35% hated the connection speeds, and a relatively small 6% didn't like that small viewing screen. Fortunately, advances in technology will easily eliminate two out of three of these issues. After all, we are not still watching American Idol on a 10-inch Philco black-and-white (although maybe this would be an improvement!).

Read more about the report and other research on items on mobile TV at www.eMarketer.com, which recently presented the findings of this study.

Are You Texting to Me???

Would Robert De Niro be any less sinister and disturbing if he drove a Mini Cooper in Taxi Driver? Would his performance in Raging Bull be any less powerful if he were just four feet tall and the movie renamed Raging Calf?

Probably not, which may be just one reason why the Tribeca Film Festival has decided to mix mobile media in with its film offerings this year as it kicks off its fifth festival today in New York City. The popular film fest was launched in 2002 Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff after the attacks on the World Trade Center to help economically and culturally revitalize Lower Manhattan through an annual celebration of film, music, and culture.

The festival’s mission is to help filmmakers reach the broadest possible audience, enable the international film community and the general public to experience the power of film, and to promote New York City as a major filmmaking center, says it's Web site. Mobile media can fulfill that promise by delivering clips and shorts to a massive worldwide audience, as well as to those lucky enough to be attending the event, which kicks off today and wraps up May 3rd with an awards ceremony.

In its first five years, the festival attracted over one and a half million attendees from the US and abroad and created more than $325 million in economic activity for New York City, says Tribeca Film Festival organizers.

Mobile media content will be channeled to mobile phones Verizon Wireless as well as on broadband Internet and FiOS, Verizon's rapidly expanding fiber network that is positioned to compete with conventional cable television systems.

Tribeca Film Festival wireless content will include three current festival full-length feature films, three short films, 49 movie trailers and three short films created exclusively for mobile users.

Obviously, we think the made-for-mobile media stuff is the most exciting since this represents the future of mobile media, which will eventually evolve from a world of mostly re-purposed and sliced-and-diced content into content that is specifically made for mobile mass audiences and mobile devices.

This is not the first time that a major film festival has dabbled in mobile media. In 2001, the Sundance Film Festival experimented with mobile wireless, although the technology wasn't quite ready to meet expectations. Fiver years later, Robert Redford and the Sundance group launched the Global Short Film Project to showcase short films and channel them to mobile devices. A good effort, but still something that falls short when it comes to taking full advantage of the location-aware and personal aspects of mobile systems.

The Tribeca Film Festival is taking it a step further by zapping out notices of private film screenings to mobile devices and sending mobile barcodes to these devices that can later be scanned for user admittance. Text-based movies reviews are also available to mobile users.

We think all of this is a move in the right direction. What do you think?

Welcome!

Unless you’ve already guessed, Inside Mobile Media is an online publication, newsletter and blog that is totally focused on mobile content development, production, distribution and consumption. It is an insider’s look at what is happening in one of the fastest growing and exciting segments of digital entertainment and mobile broadcasting.

Everyone knows that mobile content will be a big deal, but nobody really has a handle on just how huge the industry will be and how much of an impact it will have on both the consumer and business segments.

We have a few ideas (naturally!) and hope to share them with you in this virtual publication as we build our “little” community. We also want you to share some thoughts with us , so that we can pass them along to others who are knee-deep into mobile media. We've elected to use Google as the platform for this online publication because it promises to be flexible and capable of handling everything from plain old text to video. We'll see if Google lives up to its promise as we strive to bring you the latest news and information and invite you to participate in this virtual forum.



Our goal? To make Inside Mobile Media a leading source for useful news, information, tips and leads for everyone from the people who man the digital cameras to the crew that pulls it all together, channels it over a mobile device and puts it into the hands of a mobile community.

It’s a tall order, but we know we can do it with you! So, if you have a comment on the world of mobile media or something we've said then by all means post it! Also, if you have some video you would like us to showcase, or present on our Shoreline Media International portal then let us know and we'll tell you how to upload it as well as participate in planned fstivals abd competitions worldwide (more on this later!).

Thanks!


Photos by Andrew Scannell