mobileentertainment's Podcast

Amid all the ulcers and hand-wringing about US MVNO's -- Sue Marek's opinion piece in today's Wireless Week email-newsletter says it all, and I quote:

"MVNO has suddenly become a dirty word. In fact, I recently had a conversation with the public relations person at a very high-profile MVNO. He was disgruntled because I said I was working on a story about MVNOs. He said he would prefer it if I would call the company a wireless operator because from the consumer point of view, this MVNO is no different from an operator. He also said that this MVNO considers its competition to be the traditional operators, not other MVNOs. I told him that Wireless Week is a business publication and our readers are other wireless industry professionals so I thought it was important to distinguish between traditional operators and virtual network operators. He didn't agree. Clearly, he was trying to distance his firm from the term MVNO. Although I won't go so far as to say that the MVNO term has become equated with a failing business, I do think the MVNO business model was over-hyped and now many firms are experiencing a backlash. Do you think the term MVNO is a dirty word in the industry? "

So we have had Wall Street (Merrill Lynch) slam Disney's MOBILE ESPN offering, telling them to kill it -- and the Disney-brand MVNO in the works is tarnished by association. No one will talk about subscribers for AMP'd and Virgin hasn't posted subscription numbers in a coon's age, which probably means no-good-news.. And now we have HELIO launching! HELIO WEB PAGE

I personally like Helio's marketing effort (They have billboards plastered all over LA -- slogan: "Don't Call it a Phone"). It seems cool and more female-friendly by far than Amp'd. And it is becoming clear that the Mobile Content industry in the West is going to have to focus on young women to succeed, just as the Koreans and Japanese have so successfully.

And not to slight Amp'd -- I think the usability of the product and UI is fabulous... It is simply not easy to get teenage boys to step away from the parents (FREE) "family plan" and shill out the money for a unique service... The big difference in the US is that teens simply get a free $$$ ride for their mobile bill -- the youth oriented MVNOs (is there any other kind that has a chance?) need to find a way to cut the apron strings. While in Europe, kids spend almost ALL their available cash on mobile - it's accepted as normal - that is why SMS caught on as fast as it did there.

Personally I think Wall Street and everyone else should cut the MVNO's a little slack and let them work out the bugs -- it's obscene to expect a new product (like MOBILE ESPN & AMP'D) to be kicking ass after 6 months. How long did television or radio take to establish themselves? Years and years. Let's let them figure it out and check back with them in January '07. It is such a HOLLYWOOD thrash-frenzy right now -- Hollywood's favorite thing is to watch others fail -- the town loves it MUCH more than when someone succeeds. The mobile industry should be cheering for these guys to succeed -- remember the billions of dollars in those high-speed networks? Why did you build those again? -- oh yeah -- content.

Check out Sue's excellent MVNO musings here:

WIRELESS WEEK

Bashing Mobile ESPN, Verizon vs. Cingular, Pitch's UK offer of free mobile content and an in-depth interview about user-generated mobile content with David Springall, CTO of YoSpace UK. The Mobile Entertainment Industry Podcast is for professionals in the mobile content industry. Feedback to: podcast@jfrobinsonconsult.com or leave comments at the listener hotline (+1) 213 596 6293 ext. 703. http://www.JFRobinsonConsult.com. New episodes each Monday. My Odeo Channel (odeo/cd51753896390f19)

Cingular (USA) just rolled out their first phone for its HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) network, enabling customers to access mobile entertainment via a high-speed network. They claim speeds of 400 kilobits per second to 700 kbps, with burst speeds as high as 1 megabit per second. Cingular subscribers use the network for consumer applications, namely the Cingular Video service, which offers news, sports, movie trailers, and clips from TV shows. Like all the mobile operators, Cingular is counting on users to get on the phone-based-entertainment bandwagon (so do we), along with enterprise use, to make this expensive high-speed network pay off. The Cingular Video Service should be the biggest beneficiary of this new bandwidth -- hopefully we will see INNOVATIVE CONTENT as well, to go with the innovative network and innovative handset.

The phone is the The CU500, from LG Electronics, a RAZR-like clamshell phone that includes a music player for MP3, AAC, and AAC Plus songs. It comes with a 1.3-megapixel camera with a rotating lens and video capability, as well as a MicroSD slot for storage. I think it looks great. Nokia, SEM, Moto - where are you on this? Why do the Koreans ALWAYS seem to offer all the handsets for ALL the new American 3G services at launch? Hats off to them!

Read more here...

The Phone

The Service

From Cellular News:

A new series of combined broadcast systems from broadcast solutions group, Radio Frequency Systems (RFS), is providing dual-channel mobile TV service to China's southern province of Guangdong. Implemented in three stages and scheduled for completion in mid-2007, the Guangdong mobile TV project incorporates 42 separate RFS antenna systems, and represents the largest commercial mobile television network in the world to-date.

Read the article: HERE

Guangdong province is by far the most active in mobile content sales and data services. In the south near Hong Kong, it has more highly paid workers than other provinces with a bit more extra cash to spend on frivolities like mobile games & personalization. With transmission sites located in Guangdong province cities of Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, the country's latest broadcast installation is predicted to attract over three million viewers.

Interviews with CELLFIRE CEO Brent Dusing to discuss his mobile digital coupon service and JUICE WIRELESS COO and Chairman, Nick Desai, on the rise of user-generated content on mobile and his new product, JuiceCaster. MobiTV gets 70 million, new Symbian OS and the new Samsung blackberry "killer". Mobile entertainment industry consultant JFRobinson hosts the podcast. www.jfrobinsonconsult.com Comments, suggestions or rants? Call +1 213 596 6293, ext 703

If you are into CDMA and EVDO or just need mobile podcast stuff rattling around in your brain while you do email -- check out the Sprint podcasts at "The Communications Insider". Podcasts include "EVDO Roundtable", "Wireless Phone Etiquette", "Mobile Multimedia" and "NASCAR and mobile broadband technology". Well done.

http://podcast.sprint.com/1/1/

Crap Mobile Games, Skype Cold-Call Research Project, My Friend the Transistor Radio and Jasper argues with the research. Plus interview with Neil Closner of Cascada mobile about Viral Marketing. Hosted by JFRobinson. www.JFRobinsonConsult.com

Jupiter Research just announced a report focused on Europe and Mobile Entertainment. They say that only 8% of Europeans want "Mobile Video" or "Mobile TV" or whatever we are calling it... (What about PocketCinema?)

This conflicts (seemingly) with a ORC International report based on the UK (funded by Microsoft) that says 44% of UK mobile subscibers want "Mobile TV" and that the number was even higher among 16 to 24 year olds, the key Mobile Entertainment demo.

Yes, I know the UK does not consider itself part of Europe :) But those are BIG differences in numbers.

My only comment is that in 1995 if you asked 1000 people if they wanted to type very short messages with their thumbs and send them to other people and PAY for the honor, how many would have said "yes?". What made SMS the global phenom that it is, was 2 things... the fact that it struck people as a cool, slightly subversive and hip way to communicate and that texting itself, amoung the young, it became as much ENTERTAINMENT as COMMUNICATION. (high voice tariffs helped too).

When PocketCinema becomes unique, social and invents itself as a new form of "Communitainment"... no teenager in the world will be able to do without it.

Premiere Episode of The Mobile Entertainment Podcast hosted by JFRobinson. Interview with Gerrit Jan Konijnenberg, CEO of Comsys in Europe, i-Mode, DVB-H mobile video, Advertainment and Jasper the press release-reading robot.

There is a new report from PARKS ASSOCIATES that shows women are the dominators in mobile gaming.

Telephia recently published similar data, their study showed 65 percent of mobile gaming revenues are from female users. Telephia says females make up 72 percent of the total revenue generated from puzzle & strategy games, which is the hottest category of mobile games.

Parks Associates claims women represent 59% of all U.S. consumers who play games on a mobile phone. Furthermore, women comprise 61% of all those playing mobile phone games 1-4 hours per month and 58% of all those playing for more than four hours per month.

These findings concur with the overall demographic makeup of Internet gamers, where women are the majority due to their penchant for online trivia and card games. Men, on the other hand, hold the majority among gamers who play intense action and role-playing games, and there is not a comparable group of male users in the mobile gaming space.

Press releases:

PARKS ASSOCIATES: http://www.parksassociates.com/press/press_releases/2006/electronic-gaming-mc1.html

TELEPHIA: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060626/20060626005581.html?.v=1