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"Do you watch mobile video on your phone?  If you\u2019re like most mobile phone users, the fast answer is \u201CProbably not.\u201D  \nWhile there are more than 3 billion active mobile phones in the world today, 2007 found only 4% of mobile users subscribing to mobile video services.   It\u2019s not for lack of content \u2014 there are 15 billion Web videos on the Internet.  So why aren\u2019t people watching mobile videos? To date, users haven\u2019t found the mobile video experience compelling enough. The list of adoption barriers include:\n- Price- Image quality- Rich content- Long download times- Device support- The user experience (search and discovery)- Consumers' lack of awareness of the feature \nAnd frankly, it hasn\u2019t been easy for content owners and carriers to deploy mobile video.  Typically, publishing video has required very manual formatting and delivery processes that require costly administration steps and storage. The Pandora\u2019s Box for mobile video first cracked open in 2008.  Key milestone events inspired the evolution of the mobile video market - events like the release of the iPhone, NBC\u2019s broadcast of the Beijing Olympics, the 2008 Presidential election, and the increasing availability of innovative, video-enabled devices. \nThe iPhone: First Viable Multimedia Smartphone\nNever has a technology product launch generated as much buzz as Apple\u2019s iPhone.  With the iPhone\u2019s release in 2007 and the iPhone 3G release in 2008, large screen, mobile Web devices suddenly became easy and fun.  Awareness of the mobile Internet and its potential skyrocketed.  \nSpecific to mobile video, the iPhone included a native Youtube video streaming application which greatly increased awareness of the iPhone\u2019s mobile video feature. By end of 2008, Apple will have shipped over 10 million iPhones and 30% of iPhone users will have watched mobile video on their devices. Among the iPhone\u2019s many \u201Ckiller apps,\u201D mobile video is one of them. Of course, not everyone has an iPhone.  In fact, it is estimated that the iPhone is approaching 2% market share with Nokia still the dominant player at 50% market share in mobile handsets worldwide.  But, the iPhone generated enough awareness of mobile video to stimulate growth across the wireless industry.  And, the ease of discovering and watching mobile video on the iPhone is a great benchmark for other device manufacturers, application providers, and carriers to emulate. \nThe Olympics on Your Phone\nNBC has always been aggressive in deploying a widespread digital media strategy. It was no surprise that they invested heavily in providing extensive video coverage on the Internet, as well as to dedicated mobile video channels.  Compensating for the time zone difference with the US and China, users were able to log on to the Web at various times throughout the day and see any number of live or video-on-demand sporting events.  In all, the array of content that NBC broadcast was mind boggling.  In fact, the American narrative evolved into many looking forward to the end of the Olympics so they could finally get some sleep. NBC faced quite a challenge in getting the broadest reach possible out of mobile video.  Their first priority was to work closely with their carrier partners, specifically ATT, their top partner. The first thing NBC did was create an Olympics channel on premium mobile TV platforms like MediaFLO and MobiTV.  Of course, these premium mobile TV services were only available on a select number of handsets, and only a small percentage of premium paying users had access to them.   \nNBC\u2019s goal was to make their content available to as many users as possible, so it was not enough to only be able to reach the premium mobile TV subscribers.  So, NBC also published a public WAP site (mobile.nbcolympics.com) where video content could be accessed from any video-enabled mobile device with a data plan.  This free WAP site turned out to be surprisingly popular, despite limited video streaming quality and selection. Despite limited promotion of mobile video services, NBC was pleased to see over a million views of their mobile video content in the first two days of the Olympics alone. Thanks to superstar performances by the likes of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, the Olympics were a huge broadcast success for NBC, especially on the burgeoning \u201Cthird screen.\u201D \nObama v. McCain:  Who Wins on Mobile?\nMobile marketing has been a big part of Obama\u2019s Presidential campaign, with nearly 3 millions users receiving a text message announcing Obama\u2019s choice of Joe Biden for his VP running mate. The Democratic and Republican conventions were watched by nearly two thirds of American households, and live mobile streams of the events were widely watched via various mobile video channels, although specific viewership numbers have not been published. These political conventions were the most watched in history, with the first political events widely broadcast via mobile, marking another historic milestone in mobile video. \u201CWhen you consider youth and the urban skew, it makes sense that Democrats would be slightly ahead of Republicans in terms of mobile media use today,\u201D said Nic Covey, director of Nielsen mobile research.   \u201CWhile I\u2019m not sure either party is fundamentally more equipped to leverage mobile\u2019s capabilities, Democrats have an edge in that their base is more inclined to the medium today,\u201D Mr. Covey said. \nInnovation of Devices and Networks\nSince the release of the iPhone, many handset manufacturers have launched so called \u201CiPhone-killers\u201D that aspire to match the sexiness and usability of the iPhone.   This new generation of smartphones have large screens, video-streaming capabilities, and high speed 3G and WiFi connectivity.  They are, essentially, powerful multimedia devices. Many currently popular smartphones like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have crippled multimedia capabilities.  In many cases, these devices do not support video streaming, have file download limitations, or have small screens, not appropriate for video viewing. RIM has deployed video streaming capability in its latest generation of smartphones, but there are still millions of older smartphones out in the market a whole generation behind. Examples of next-generation, media-centric devices include the Sprint Instinct, the T-Mobile Android G1, and the impending BlackBerry Storm. These devices all include WiFi, video streaming codecs (like RTSP video streaming), and large touch screens that don\u2019t display a keyboard while streaming a video in full-screen mode. Certainly, the increasing influx of large screen, highly connected, multimedia friendly devices will help drive adoption of video streaming features. \nLeveraging the Power of Youth\nLet\u2019s consider the power of the youth segment for a moment. On the desktop, they shied away from email and made Instant Messaging popular.  On mobile, they are 12-key savvy and never really adopted wireless email.  Will they care about the mobile browser?  Not likely. They will demand Internet content, yes, like video content and social networking sites for messaging and picture sharing, but not in the context of the browser.  Mobile video has been particularly popular among youth.  For example, MTV has been quick to identify the importance of mobile in reaching its relatively young, media-hungry customer base. Specifically, MTV has been pushing out election coverage.  \n\u201CWe\u2019ve had extraordinary interest in this election from our audience, with more than 80 percent telling us that they\u2019re following it closely,\u201D said Ian Rowe, senior vice president of public affairs and strategic partnerships for MTV, New York. \u201CWe want to reach young people wherever they are, especially in the last few weeks of the election, so we launched this made-for-mobile show.  \"This will be very powerful, especially given the large amount of young people who have a mobile phone,\u201D he said. \u201CWe want to make sure we\u2019re reaching our audience on whatever media platform they\u2019re consuming content.\u201D As data plan prices drop and feature rich \u201Cfree\u201D phones become more media savvy, the \u2019tweens and the under-30 crowd will more fully engage in the mobile Internet. \nThe Elephant in the Room\nWhen it comes to mobile video adoption barriers, the elephant in the room is the wireless carrier.  Carriers are always looking for ways to monetize their networks and content.  And, naturally, they see premium video services as another way to differentiate their offering and increase ARPU.   Unfortunately, creating a walled garden of video content for premium-paying users will stifle adoption and limit the amount of content and viral effects needed to spread the popularity of mobile video.      According to many user studies, price has been the primary objection to mobile video. \n\n\n\nPublic WAP sites that stream free video are starting to gain popularity.   Users can visit free sites like mywaves.com or download applications that enable free video search and streaming.  These sites and applications support themselves with advertising models such as pre-roll video ads or WAP site or application display ads.   \nSo far, users have been open to being exposed to a reasonable amount of advertising in exchange for access to compelling, free content.  The users must pay, of course, for a data plan to access these mobile videos. Much like the Internet from a desktop computer, the only cost for free services is the broadband access. Carriers are slowly dropping prices for data plans in order to drive widespread adoption of the mobile Internet.  But, for now, data plans are priced too high to attract the majority of users. Much like we saw on the Internet, once the price of access drops enough to entice the mass market, a wide variety of content will become available and users will be exposed to a more compelling offering.   At that point, mobile video will become as ubiquitous and rich as it is from the desktop. \nBeyond price and content, the video viewing experience must be as good as users are accustomed to on the desktop, even on slower data networks.  To achieve a smooth video playback with no stuttering or buffering, content owners and carriers will need to deploy a robust mobile video formatting and streaming platform. Video delivery tools have matured significantly in the last year, and content owners and carriers can expect to support the majority of devices in the market. \nIn the end, the greatest tipping point for mushrooming mobile video users will be a technology providing faster startup and a smooth, clear video viewing experience that exceeds user expectations and brings them back for more.\nDave Sloan is marketing director of Avot Media. Avot Media is the innovator behind tipMotion, the high performance video transcoding and near-real-time streaming appliance enabling video delivery to Web-enabled mobile devices."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/10/30/mobile-video-tipping-points/>