THIS WEEK I THINK I finally saw a web-TV application that will actually work.
It wasn’t on a television set, though, but on a mobile phone.
Mark Henderson, the president of Ericsson Canada, showed conference delegates at this week’s excellent Canadian Telecom Summit what’s going on in the mobile space in other parts of the world and how he’s sure it will be here, too, and soon.
While we North American holster-geeks might think we’re all pretty connected with our buzzing Blackberrys and assorted other PDAs and phones playing digital-quality rock or rap when a call comes in, only 55% of us actually have a mobile device. That compares to 70% in Japan and a whopping 89% in Europe. Some markets in Europe are 100%-penetrated.
In India, companies there are adding three million wireless subscribers a month, said Henderson. That means between April 1st and May 31st, India added more new subscribers than the entire current Canadian wireless marketplace.
He predicted that by 2010 there will be three billion mobile telephone subscribers in the world, as compared to 1.1 billion wired telephony customers.
Besides all the additional customers, what’s bringing in more and more dollars, are the data services and higher bandwidth options like video. Global broadband take-up is now faster on the wireless side than on the wired side, globally speaking, added Henderson.
The really slick demonstration was that of Mobile TV. On a handset about as big as personal Playstation, customers can watch live television or download clips on demand such as sports highlights. In Europe, soccer highlights are so popular that some wireless companies offer downloadable highlights of goals from a choice of nine different camera angles, said Henderson.
The whole web TV part of it comes through the dynamic vertical and horizontal navigation bars that can take viewers to web sites or other channels or call up some video on demand or offer to message or e-mail someone, while the digital video still plays.
In China, some soap operas are making five-minute episodes specifically for mobile users, said Henderson. Can you envision Global Television making five-minute vignettes of Train 48? I can, if they can share the extra $10 a month or whatever the rate is that Rogers Wireless will get from such customers.
In the U.K., where reality show Big Brother has maintained its popularity – and where viewers can peer in 24/7 if they wish – the show is counting 20,000 connections a day from wireless customers who are watching the contestants via their mobile devices.
While many companies, from Microsoft to Videotron to Rogers have launched versions of web TV to little success at various stages of their R&D, I think the version to the wireless phone has the best chance for success here. Other companies think so too. Looking abroad again, Korean company KTF is seeing 90% of its 3G services revenue coming from video to the wireless phone, said Henderson.
No matter how hard cable and other television companies have tried to make the television a piece of active media – a lean-forward piece of the interactive puzzle such as a personal computer – none have succeeded. For nearly all TV viewers, they’re content to sit back and watch TV, not type or surf the web. No one wants a living room infra-red keyboard, it seems.
Even the young-uns, the twitchy, all-connected-all-the-time crowd – you put a TV remote in their hands and they vege. Sprawled on the couch, half-awake with a sandwich in the other hand, they’re not about to dive into the Internet on TV. Web television has to be as easy as a few thumb-pushes, and it never has been.
Besides, they already have their laptops right beside them to go to the web and phones in hand to instant message friends. (Henderson shook his head though when he mentioned the development of voice recognition instant messaging software. “That seems the height of laziness to me – why not just call someone?” he said.)
Interactive TV on the phone actually seems a better, natural fit. Instead of bringing data to the TV set, mobile phone companies are bringing TV to the handset. While only the truly dedicated would watch a movie on the tiny screens, the wireless phones of today are already lean-forward hardware where people are ready to see TV, access the web and message/talk to their friends all at the same time.
Most companies have stopped trying now to bring the web to the television, which is probably a good idea. That isn’t to say that interactive television won’t develop as we go along, it just has to be thumby.
This is part of the reason why iTV apps like video on demand are working and Microsoft’s and Rogers’ and Videotron’s WebTV are mothballed – and why both Bell Mobility and Rogers Wireless both announced television for their customers this year.
Web TV will work, the screen’s just a little smaller than first thought.
– Greg O’Brien
