It's the smaller specialist players who are genuinely dominating the mobile
TV sector. On the back of geekTV's success, Player X has just landed $9.85
million (£5 million) worth of extra funding. The news follows the recent
revelation that Virgin Mobile TV has only acquired some 7,000 subscribers in
around four months. That's despite a multimillion-pound (circa £2.5 million)
advertising campaign featuring Pamela Anderson, the former Baywatch actress.
Plus at Rok TV, marketing director, Bruce Renny, claims that his company's
FreeBe TV offering now has some 130,000 subscribers in 120 countries worldwide.
"China has taken off big style," Renny told the Mobile Insight. Player
X's performance is just as impressive. He wouldn't reveal actual subscriber
figures, but Player X CEO, Tony Pearce, pointed out that geekTV has risen to the
number three slot with 3 UK. "That's behind big hitters like ITV1 and ITN which
isn't too bad for an unbranded channel. You can see how popular
'made-for-mobile' TV content is with 3's subscribers," he claimed. "We met with
many mobile content companies but what excited us about Player X was not only
its impressive games business, but also its leadership in mobile video,"
revealed Larry McDonald, a partner with Nordic Venture Partners – one of the two
VCs that has just funded Player X.
In a web broadcast, Motorola informed the world that it expects to lose 5 per
cent of its 70,000 workforce. The brunt of the 3,500 job loss will be felt by
middle managers. The reason for the cuts is very clear. It saw a drop in
operating profit margins to below 5 per cent in Q4 2006 from 11.9 per cent in Q3
2006. That's a mean feat. Understandably CEO Ed Zander stated, "Our goal is to
return to double-digit operating margins in the second half of this year."
Motorola says it expects to do so by reducing the cost of making phones. The
company chiefly blamed price cuts for its flagship Razr phone for the drop in
margins. It also claims that price competition in emerging markets is 'brutal'.
This doesn't bode too well for Apple's iPhone. If ever there was a high price
designer handset it was the Razr. Yet in two years it has already lost its
steam. Apple hopes to sell 12 million iPhones at high prices. Yet is has nothing
like the distribution model of Motorola, the world's Number Two vendor. Still,
Motorola said it shipped 65.7 million handsets in Q4, up 47 per cent from Q4
2006, and its share of the global market rose to an impressive 23.3 per cent,
almost one point up from Q3. New models to be launched in Q1-Q2 2007, the
company hopes, will restore its fortunes. Next month's 3GSM show should provide
an answer to that. Motorola's comments about emerging markets help explain why
it recently said 'No' to participating in the GSM Association's '3G For All'
initiative. The company did well out of the previous 'Emerging Mobile Handsets'
(EMH) programme but reckons that cheap 3G phones aren't possible yet. The
current pricing of 3G chipsets is reputedly why the iPhone lacks a 3G
capability. Can a handset really support a high price tag if it doesn't support
the highest tech specs? Look at the Nokia Vertu. That had a high price tag and
luxury fittings. But its tech spec was awful.
In terms of gross value of bets placed, mobile gambling will now grow from a
market worth $1.35 billion in 2006 to $16.6 billion by 2011, according to
Juniper Research. That's down by $6.4 billion from the company's own prediction
just over six months ago. And the USA's clamp-down in online gambling is to
blame, says report's author, Bruce Gibson. "Following the tightening of legal
barriers to all forms of online gambling in the USA we decided to revisit our
market forecasts as clearly the environment had changed," Gibson commented. "We
have certainly dramatically cut back forecasts for the development of the North
American market." The ban shifted the focus to the markets of Europe and Asia
Pacific. These are now expected to contribute over 80 per cent of the total
value. Given an estimated $665 million worth in bets placed in 2006, Europe is
presently the largest market for mobile gambling. However, it is forecast to be
overtaken by the Asia Pacific market by 2008, which is in turn expected to reach
over $6.7 billion by 2011. In terms of type of mobile betting, sports betting is
currently the largest sector, but lotteries are forecast to take the top spot by
2010, the researcher reckons.
The Archbishops' Council - which advises Christians belonging to the Church
Of England (C of E) – has initiated an SMS (text) message campaign for its
faithful. For the 50 days covering the period of the Christian celebration of
Lent, those signing up will get a daily text message encouraging them to behave
in a more Christian manner. Some of the messages seem quite appropriate – such
as giving up your place in a queue (line) to somebody who appears to be in a
rush. But apparently there's one message that says you should leave money in a
shopping trolley for somebody else to find. In order to join up, merely send the
word 'Lent' to 64343. [This probably only works in the UK]. Participants will be
charged in ten days slots receiving a premium rate message costing them £1 –
equivalent to 10 pence a day. Any money raised that doesn't cover running costs
will be donated to Christian Aid. The service is due to kick off on Monday 19th
February. If you don't like the messages, simply text the word STOP to 64343.
More details can be found on the Love Life Live Lent site. Presumably whoever is
providing the SMS service can now add God to its list of clients?
Yet another social network aimed at mobile users. This one
takes the biscuit, though. Saki Mobile claims it is aiming
at 300 million users globally. But is only currently
accessible on around 100 Windows based smartphones. Never
mind, because its creator – Digital Standard Inc (DSI) –
claims there's soon going to be a new version called Saki
Lite. It'll be available before Q3 2007 and guess what?
It'll use WAP to enable thousands of mobile phones to access
the service. Saki does, however, seem to have managed to
sign up some big names to its service. The list includes
MySpace, Tagworld, Pageflakes, Yahoo! and Google. Naturally,
for a social network, Saki will be encouraging its members
to upload their content including videos and photos. Other
future plans include introducing versions for the Play
Station Portable and Ultra Mobile PC by Q1 2008. DSI is
obviously trying to get the big brands to sign up to its
service. It offers a way for mobile users to create their
own portal with access to all their favourite applications
and content in one place. The blurb says you can look at it
with any browser. But when you click on browser support it
informs you that you need Internet Explorer 5.0 or above.
Shouldn't they have launched the WAP version first because,
frankly, it's extremely restricted right now.
Forget the DSP-based headsets you saw last week at CES, Las Vegas – Brit
supplier, Qstik, says its EVOQ Bluetooth DSP headset is much better. So there.
The headset is particularly suited to hands-free driving, listening to music in
stereo and for VoIP calls on a PC. "On features, technical performance, quality
and price, the Qstik EVOQ wins hands down," says Amir Nooral, md with Qstik.
Well he would, wouldn't he? The significant claim Qstik makes, however, is that
it has now built sophisticated technology – such as adaptive bi-directional
noise cancellation into a consumer product. The noise cancellation was
originally developed for military applications; its echo cancellation, is taken
from telecoms infrastructure applications; and its auto volume control, acoustic
shock protection and speech enhancement facilities were developed for call
centre usage. For listening to music streamed from a handset, the EVOQ supports
two crucial Bluetooth profiles - Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) and
Audio Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP). Better still both of those profiles
are built into a Bluetooth dongle which Qstik sells for laptops and PCs. That
should greatly improve the quality of VoIP calls – including Skype if you so
choose. The Qstik EVOQ DSP Bluetooth headset is priced at £59.99 but Qstik is
currently doing a deal where it's bundled with the Bluetooth USB dongle for
£69.99. On its own the dongle costs £17.99.
CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) has acquired two firms: - Nordnav Technologies AB and Cambridge Positioning Systems.
CSR - which specialised in Bluetooth - now wants to build GPS into its chips so
it can offer the facility for just US $1.
www.csr.com
In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)
This week
BBC Three Mobile
Mobile Insight recently discovered that there is as a WAP site run by the
British broadcaster , the BBC, for its BBC3 channel - BBC3
Mobile site. What this site does is enable you to download video clips of
certain BBC programmes like Torchwood, Comedy Soup and (theoretically) some
episodes of the Sci-Fi hit, Dr Who. Anybody who wants to try BBC 3 Mobile out
should text the word 'THREE' to 81010. Or type the following URL into their WAP
browser :-
