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Smartphones and Mobile TV: What has changed in 2009?
The last two years have shown a sharp growth in the use of smartphones and it seems likely that a major change in user behaviour is underway. More than 500 million smartphones are in use toady with capabilities to access internet via 3G, WiFi or other networks. More and more users are using the handsets to search the internet (say by using google mobile, Bing , msn or yahoo), look for offers for travel, weather information, food outlets or use webmail .Most mail sites such as hotmail or live! have mobile versions now. Teens also use it extensively for social networking such as on sites like Facebook, Flickr! , LinkedIn, Twitter, itsmy.com etc. They also use it for sites relating to sex, stream videos and use MMS extensively. Smartphones are also being increasingly used for location based services such as using Mapquest, Google Maps, SirF Atlas and others. Browsing sites such as amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, taking part in online auctions, using chatrooms are also common applications. It is expected that over 1 billion smartphones will be in use by end of 2010, with a significant number being driven by markets in US, Europe, China and India.
Mobile TV whether delivered as streaming video or via a terrestrial media therefore does not always imply buying an expansive phone. Most 3G phones support streaming video and as terrestrial networks become popular, more and more smartphones come with terrestrial tuners built in. In Korea and Japan, a majority of handsets now have a tuner for T-DMB or ISDB-T built in, both of which are free TV services for mobiles. In China, where the number of cities from where mobile TV based on CMMB is offered have jumped to 190 within a year of commercial drive and every new 3G handset to receive government approval must have a CMMB tuner. These three countries today have more mobile TV users than any other country owing to this simple reason. Mobile advertising, so far small is also expected to pick up as the smartphones go beyond a critical mass of 1 billion.
It is imminent that with falling prices of devices like multimedia processors, the smartphones will tend to largely replace the use of the desktops as the medium for access to information, social networking as well as doing daily tasks such as checking mail, making reservations and secure banking transactions because these devices have better embedded security cores and malware is more difficult to propagate owing to the limited resource set and processing capabilities of these devices.
To the industry, the realization that the mobile devices should be considered as THE primary media rather than an extension of desktop experience came rather late. The initial mobile devices had browsers which could view regular websites ( even via multiple screens) while development of websites specifically for mobile devices was rather slow. This accounts for relatively few websites designed for mobiles even as most biggies such as google, gmail , amazon , YouTube or e-bay have now dedicated sites for mobiles.
The launch of Twitter where the maximum size of the message is only 140 characters and where you can even shorten the website references you give in this short message is an indicator of how applications will completely transform to serve the mobile smartphone world. Twitter, for example can potentially reach all the handsets ( smartphones or not) with a potential reach of over 5 billion users. Sites such as itsmy.com are other examples which are designed for mobiles and desktops are an extension rather than being the other way around.
There is now a scramble in the industry to enable virtually all websites, whether these are for auctions, news, travel, weather, streaming videos( e.g. DivX mobile or Flash Lite),providing game downloads, music stores, internet radios, freeware and downloads specially for mobiles. Application shops for mobiles, which rarely sold a few thousand applications now sells millions ow downloads. For example, the iPhone application shop ( iTunes ) has over 100,000 applications developed by over 125,000 developers, and had seen millions of downloads since its launch in Feb 2009. And this is only one of the application stores. There are over a hundred others including application stores from Nokia, Orange, Sony-Ericsson, RIM( Blackberry) and others.
Guess which TV players had one of the largest downloads? It was the TVUplayer for iPhones and iPods. These trends have set a scramble for mobile players and even Microsoft has announced Silverlight for Mobiles. Guess where the action is for development of gaming? It is for mobile games including multiplayer mobile games. Websites are coming up with free stuff for mobiles including wallpapers, screen savers, ringtones and free mobile websites for individuals or companies. Employment websites such as monster.com, Mp3 download websites and popular search engines are now targeting the use by mobile devices.
Mobile TV is one of the applications which now exists on the smartphones together with a host of others which enable navigation, multimedia, and secure shopping. It is no longer an isolated application requiring a separate handsets which users would rather ignore. As services based on terrestrial broadcasting such as MediaFLO ( AT&T and Verizon) and ATSC M/H roll out, multi-standard tuners are likely to become popular in most phones.
The mobile operators initially tried to provide locked phones, secured application downloads and firewalled websites but the launch of newer and newer devices with open systems such as Android has finally put the fear of God and they have decided to go with the FLO. Vonage, for example, became available for mobiles using Wi-Fi, bypassing the cellular networks. In CTIA wireless, AT&T announced opening up its mobile network for applications such as VoIP ( Skype, Vonage,Gtalk etc.). Even the iPhone application store has now an application for Vonage mobile.
A new frontier is now being launched as Comcast and Time Warner start broadband operations using WiMAX. This will provide an alternative to Wi-Fi with high sustained data rates which can support video.
Mobile Video is now riding on a massive wave, which is transforming the way the net is accessed and media is delivered. Almost all popular channels already have their mobile versions such NBC mobile or ESPN mobile and are available via 3G as well as terrestrial broadcast networks. It is now amongst a community of over 500 million devices which can be potentially addressed. Technologies such as FLO TV are set to reach over 200 million users by end of 2009.
The new medium is now already on a path to becoming universal, even though some of the users may start seeing more of it by end of 2009 or early 2010 when more stations with ATSC and FLO go on air and as HSPA networks from major carriers roll out with greater speeds. It will be imperative for all businesses big or small to target the new world through mobiles as they started doing through internet a while back. A lot of content and applications are right now being repurposed. But one thing is certain – the future growth of mobile TV and video is set to surprise most people.