The road ahead for mobile videos

There is a lot of talk about mobile video and how it could be the next big thing and so on. But there are two primary issues that stand in the way of mobile videos.

1. While watching videos might be a cool experience on Apple iPhone or a Nokia N95, it may not be so in a low-end mobile phone with a tiny little screen. Unfortunately, the number of high-end phones in the market is very low when compared to the number of low-end phones.

2. Most of the data plans available with carriers today are quite costly and a normal mobile user might think twice before going for a video plan, as it might add a substantial amount to his otherwise normal mobile bill.

Interestingly, mobile video has been popular in Asia and Europe. The reasons are not hard to find. High-end mobile phone penetration in the Asian market is high and data plans are not as costly as they are in the US. Also, carriers in Europe and Asia have been proactive in implementing a lot of ideas to encourage mobile advertising as it might boost their revenues. In fact, carriers in Europe have even gone to the extent of offering mobile phone porn, or simply mobile porn, to customers which has resulted in large number of customers opting for mobile video plans which offer porn content.

While I certainly don’t expect porn from carriers in the US, I do hope they do something to make mobile videos affordable for subscribers. Already, a large number of high-end mobile users don’t rely on their carriers for mobile videos, as they can access it easily on websites like YouTube, MySpace, and Mywaves, all of which are easily accessible from a high-end phone. So, carriers need to come up with affordable mobile video subscription plans to tap this market that can boost their revenue considerably.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Mywaves makes waves in the market

Mywaves, a mobile video site, has been making news recently. Especially, its partnership with MTV has got a lot of attention. Through this partnership, MTV will provide free, ad-supported mobile content to Mywaves site from its products like VH1, Jackass, Gametrailers, and Atom Entertainment. This is the first time MTV is offering free mobile content. Previously, the content was available only through network carriers and it required users to either go for the pay-per-view model or the subscription model.

Apart from MTV, Mywaves has got quite an impressive clientele with names like Microsoft, Mini, Paramount Pictures, Toyota, and more. Mywaves serves users with free mobile video content supported by ads. The ads range from text messages to banner ads, content discovery screens, and more. Interestingly, Mywaves came out of beta just about a year back and the kind of progress it has made has impressed a lot of people in the market.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile Web.

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