Tuesday, November 28, 2006 Limpag: Mobile TV for the masses By Max Limpag Celltalk
PROJECTION. Sony Ericsson last week said it is expecting “mobile television broadcasts will reach the global masses in 2008,” the Associated Press (AP) reported over the weekend. By that time, the company said one third of the world’s mobile phone users will “regularly be watching TV broadcasts on their handsets.”
I have an inkling the projection is too optimistic, unless of course you only count people who can afford to regularly upgrade phones as part of the global masses. Setting that aside, the prospect for mobile TV is indeed high.
But, as a Nokia-commissioned earlier pointed out, the prospects are in new programming and distribution formats that will be introduced by constraints of the medium such as shorter “talking-heads” type episodes.
The mobile TV that’s coming isn’t the television as we know it today; it is the web TV that kids nowadays love so much. It’s downloadable TV and not just streaming video. It isn’t Korina Sanchez; it’s lonelygirl115 or some other number.
WEARABLE. While we’re on the subject of projections, here’s another one: Five years from now the mobile phone, as we know it today, will be transformed into something that can be worn. The Cellular News website said that Professor Nigel Linge of the University of Salford in UK predicts that the future of mobile communications is in wearable technology: Components that can be embedded in clothes and accessories.
Remember that Mission Impossible scene where Tom Cruise’s character receives a video stream in his sunglasses? I’m sure less than a decade from now, we will be seeing that capability paired with the cell phone. We already have Oakley glasses that can stream audio; the next step is to make the glass lens itself display your mobile phone screen. When that day comes, let’s all watch out for people reading text messages on their glasses and then falling into manholes. Now that, as they say, would be the day.
MOTOJEEPNEY. As you read this, the Motojeepney has just been launched in Cebu. The Motojeepney is a follow-up to what has been described as the successful Motobus tour. The Motobus and Motojeepney are mobile marketing tools for the company. I spent a few minutes inside the Motobus during the Cebu launch of the latest Rokr and the vehicle is filled with various test models of the company’s different products. The bus also has a technician to check your phone and even upgrade your firmware.
