Steve Smith, the editor of Wireless Business Forecast, says a better user interface -- not necessarily leading-edge content -- is a key to getting more people to watch mobile television, according to an article he wrote for MobileInsider.
Smith discusses the upcoming mobile TV series, "The Pool," distributed by Fun Little Movies (FLM) on Sprint, that will be advertised by Toyota. I wrote about that a few days ago.
Smith interviewed Brad Gillingham, FLM's CEO, who says Toyota says "gets" what viewers want: Male, youth-oriented comedy with not too many Toyota commercial placements.
Gillingham says, "They are a pretty sophisticated audience. They know when they are being had. We don't want that to happen."
Content not always king
But will a well produced show do an effective job of promoting mobile TV and capturing subscribers? Smith says no, in part because people have to change their habits and first be reminded that mobile TV is even available.
"Mobile video is going to have to be more than just good. It is going to have to be insistent, to find some way to push the stuff we really want to the top of the deck and remind us to watch....
"The phone deck is the worse interface this side of the microwave oven. Why would I want to navigate it just to tease up the right video from a relentless set of menus?
"What I would prefer is the ability to subscribe to mobisodes and have them float to the top of the deck and present themselves to me much as they do on my iPod after it synchs up, or my TiVo."
Better user control, marketing
I've written before that mobile TV's navigational capabilities are awful and subscribers should have much more control over how they manage their programs.
Companies creating cellular operating systems, such as Qualcomm (BREW), Nokia (Symbian OS) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile 5.0), spend a huge amount of time and money crafting increasingly sophisticated operating systems.
These companies necessarily have to provide the user interfaces their cellular operator customers demand. Unfortunately, the "user" part of the interface often gets short shrift because subscribers aren't given enough navigational flexibility.
Look toward Tivo?
Smith concludes, "My first guess is that mobile video should spend less time worrying about content and more time figuring out delivery. Impulsively, mobile keeps looking to the Web for precedents.
"I think the medium might do well to look instead at TiVo."
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