Mobile TV: It Isn't About the Small Screen

Some observers might argue that most mobile users do not really want to watch TV on their handsets all that badly. Others might argue they'd like to, but the small screen or shortened battery life are barriers. Some would say the logical use is short form video to fill interstitial time, not long-form content or TV shows. Others will say people don't want to pay as much as carriers now charge.

All these objections have some merit. But what might be most significant is the limited amount of linear content people can get.

AT&T's new video service will deliver 10 television channels for a fee of $15 a month.

AT&T Mobile TV will be available in 58 markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

Two handsets are available immediately, the LG Vu, which sells for $299.99, and the Samsung Access, which sells for $199.99.

Observers often note that a typical TV viewer only watches about seven channels. The problem is that every person uses a different mix of seven channels. And that's the issue for AT&T and Verizon.

AT&T Mobile TV delivers CBS Mobile, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, Fox Mobile, MTV, NBC 2Go, NBC News 2Go, Nickelodeon, Sony Pictures and CNN Mobile Live.

As long as those channels cover enough of your seven favorites, you're going to be interested. If that list does not contain at least one of your favorites, you won't be that interested. And then any rational buyer is going to do a "cost per channel" analysis to figure out whether buying the mobile TV service makes sense.

And the end of the day, all the other objections likely can be overcome. The basic objection, though, is that people will want access to their favorite channels. That value proposition makes sense to 96 percent of all households.

What people won't want is to pay for is channels they don't really watch. Cable TV succeeded because it gave consumers more choice. Mobile TV today is lagging precisely because it doesn't provide enough choice.

Nokia, T-Mobile Enhance Mobile Web

Nokia and T-Mobile have signed a deal that has Nokia supplyng T-Mobile with phones especially tailored to provide easy access to T-Mobile’s “web’n’walk” internet service and Nokia’s mobile portal Ovi.

The two companies also saythey will work on making social network sites more mobile, and will cooperate on creating mobile widgets to create a “richer” user experience for T-Mobile’s web’n’walk service.

A couple of angles: Nokia supports its own content portal; T-Mobile, despite that possible conflict, needs Nokia to optimize handsets for web'n'walk. That's co-opetition, to be sure: competing and collaborating all at the same time.

Facebook Apps Skew Towards "Just for Fun"

Enterprise IT managers generally consider Facebook a huge time waster. They might be right. Most of the applications created for Facebook so far are of the playful sort, with no direct business application.

Still, there's more than a smattering of tools that can have business application, beyond the ability to create business-focused social groups.

There are more than a thousand apps self-described as business tools, and many of the others might be used in a business way.

Sure, it's a non-guided, messy process. But that's pretty much the way innovation is going to happen in any case.

It's just a process of discovery.

Lots of business-focused people are trying to figure out how to apply social networking in an enterprise context, so there is a clear sense that this is not all about "fun and games," even if that's where most of the apps are.

Dumb Pipe Isn't a Bad Thing

The unique contribution any communications network plays in a value chain is precisely the "pipe."

That doesn't mean "just" pipe, but connectivity is fundamentally important. Consider a Strategy Analytics forecast of global consumer and advertiser spend on mobile media and associated transport.

Strategy Analytics predicts mobile media spending will rise from just under $47 billion at the end of 2007 to almost $102 billion by 2012, driven by access to web services, video and music.

But note the contribution made by "data transport," which is the "dumb pipe" part of the business. Premium services are important, no doubt. But access is far from unimportant.

Over the same period the population of unique cellular users actively using mobile content services will more than double from 406 million to over 870 million.

What About Wal-Mart?

One issue the studios are going to have to grapple with, as they go with "date and date" release of DVD and video-on-demand movie content, is channel conflict. Specifically, Wal-Mart sells about 40 percent of all DVDs. Target sells about 15 percent. Add in Best Buy and you probably have half the market for retail DVD sales.

Those three mass market retailers won't be happy if DVD sales, used as loss leaders to drive shopper traffic, start to dwindle. Surely studio executives are thinking about this problem. Ultimately, they'll want to come up with some sort of kiosk operation allowing buyers to sideload rental or sale content directly to their iPods.

You'd think USB flash drives might do the trick. The issue will be the cost of storage required to hold a two-hour HDTV movie. And then there's the issue of moving that content directly to the TV for viewing.

The studios will figure this out, or somebody will help them figure it out. The studios won't want to make a key channel partner too angry.

Video Substitution Coming

In the movie content market, all revenue streams beyond theatrical showings basically are substitutional: money made in the DVD segment tends to displace revenue that might have been earned in the pay TV or broadcast TV segments, for example.

With the recent movement towards "day and date" release of movie content to DVD channels as well as video on demand, one should logically expect some revenue to shift from the DVD channel to the VOD channel.

But there's a difference in the "quality" of the revenue, from a studio standpoint. Studios make 60 to 70 percent profit margins on downloaded or streamed content; only 20 to 30 percent on DVDs.

Aggregate consumer spending might not change all that much, but studios might make more money. That is the only reason they'd even agree to a different "day and date" scheme.

Apple Gets Earlier Access to Movies

All you need to know about where money gets made in the movie business are the three letters "DVD."

Studios make 14 percent or less from theatrical showings and about half their revenue from DVD rentals and sales. Less than 10 percent is earned from all cable, satellite and telco payments, including content shown as premium channels such as HBO and video on demand.

DVD is where the money is, and studios aren't going to make any really significant changes they think will damage those revenues. So they must have concluded that "the times they are a changing."

After years of negotiating with the movie studios, Apple finally has gotten the major studios to allow rental of iTunes movies on the same day they release new DVDs. That's a big change, and suggests studios now have evidence that they will make no less money, and possibly more, if they do so.

Disney has had that arrangement with Apple since September 2006. Now Apple will be able to distribute movies from 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. , Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios.

New movies can now be purchased for $15 or rented for $4. Older movies cost $10 to buy or $3 to rent.

For any number of practical reasons, such as the fact that hard drives always die, it is likely iTunes will get more revenue traction from rentals than from sales. Up to this point Apple movie sales have been pretty low, volume-wise.

Rentals are not only are cheaper, but are congruent. Most movies are not compelling enough to watch more than once, and owning makes most sense for movies one thinks one is going to watch several times or more.

So the issue everyone now will be watching is how revenue shares move around within the movie ecosystem. Studios wouldn't be taking this move unless they think they'll make more money from downloads and streaming than from selling discs.

Sure, downloads probably will negatively affect DVD rentals and sales. But the profit margins on downloads are much higher than for DVD sales or rentals. So if all downloads do is cannibalize DVD sales and rentals, the studios win.

Free Wi-Fi for All AT&T Wireless Customers?

AT&T hotspots have started providing iPhone users with free Wi-Fi access at Starbucks and other locations. AT&T Broadband customers also have free access. One wonders how long it will be before all AT&T Wireless customers will get access. AT&T has talked about that.

That's one advantage of customer and network scale. AT&T doesn't necessarily have to make much actual incremental revenue from the Wi-Fi service. What it does is make its wired and wireless service much more sticky.

And given its scale--100 million customers--AT&T is in position to create other "everybody is on network" services of various types, the same way Skype creates "free calling to all other Skype users."

The difference is that AT&T can mix and match services and features available on its in-region wired, national wireless and global network, including mobile and fixed broadband, mobile and fixed calling, messaging or other services with a "social" or "community" aspect.

Scale has many advantages.

T-Mobile Lighting 3G: Voice Only

T Mobile is lighting its 3G network in New York in voice-only mode, says Gizmodo. Don't ask me why. I cannot figure this out. Maybe the backhaul issues are serious enough that broadband really isn't available yet. If so, don't bother offering commercial service.

The voice network and EDGE data network already work. What conceivable value does a T-Mobile customer get from 3G speeds if all you can do is what you already are doing? Sure, it's just the first city of a national network.

But why not offer some new service that the network actually enables?

Mobile Sites Significantly Lift Site Usage

TotalWeb, the new company created by Nielsen Online, says mobile Web sites provide a significant increase in usage. Weather-based sites, for example, see an average 22 percent lift in usage, compared to sites that are designed for PC access alone.

So do entertainment sites, which get 22 percent more use when sites are rendered for mobile screens.

Game and music sites get 15 percent lift when authored for mobile use.

Nielsen says 87 million U.S. mobile users subscribe to mobile Internet services, and more than one in ten mobile subscribers (13.7 percent) actively uses mobile Internet each month.

iPhone Sales to Double?

Apple is going to sell lots more phones (no surprise there) if AT&T does subsidize the new 3G iPhones, says Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi, reported by Eric Savitz, Barrons columnist.

If AT&T does provide a $200 subsidy for the3G iPhone, bringing the phone’s cost for consumers down to about $200, where current models are priced at $399 and $499, sales might double, based on past precedent.

Sacconaghi notes that that sales of the Motorola RAZR doubled when its price dropped from $500 to $150 and doubled again when the price went to $100.

If AT&T average revenue per subscriber from the iPhone is in the mid-$90 a month range, compared to less than $60 for the average post-paid user, then AT&T has an additional $720 in revenue over the course of a two-year plan to offset the subsidy.

AT&T Launching Mobile TV

AT&T is launching its own mobile TV service, which should provide more pointers for Dish Network, also expected to launch its own service in the future.

AT&T's service requires specific device models costing between $200-$300, a TV-only data plan costing $15 a month (or $30 if a user also wantsWeb browsing). One device not supported is the Apple iPhone, which for many is reason enough not to bother.

It is doubtful AT&T expects much immediate success. Verizon does not seem to have seen healthy uptake for its Vcast service so far.

Qualcomm, which provides the technology to support the Verizon service, says only that so far the service has been a disappointment. Silicon Alley writer Michael Learmonth suggests that
perhaps 1.5 percent, or 820,000 Verizon subscribers, have ever watched TV on their phones.

In Europe, where several operators offer mobile TV, fewer than one percent subscribe.

Analysts at the Yankee Group say five percent of mobile subscribers are actually willing to pay for mobile TV, if the monthly price is $5.

As has been the case for other mobile services, sluggish uptake now does not mean the service never will be significant. Mobile service itself and texting took quite some time to become firmly embedded as a part of consumer behavior, at least in the U.S. market.

Still, some question whether there is much appetite for a limited selection of long-form TV shows in the mobile space. The issue there is whether the preferred delivery mode might not ultimately be some on-demand delivery. Content breadth is more important to users than lots of other attributes.

Right now, that thesis can't be tested as the programming selection is so limited. Only when the variety of programming is about as rich as any typical cable, satellite or telco line-up is can other possible barriers be tested, including price of the handset, price of the subscription and need for dedicated handsets.

And even those attributes can only be truly tested when there's enough ability to download or stream video "over the top."

Comcast Triple Pay Adoption 18%

About 18 percent of Comcast customers actually buy the triple play. And there seems to be some resistance to the notion, despite its fundamental importance for both cable and telephone companies these days.

Qwest executives, for example, have discovered they are leaving money on the table by not selling single play and dual play services more aggressively.

Comcast says it is going to do the same. The triple or quadruple play might be the fundamental packaging strategy.

That doesn't mean every customer is going to buy such a package. And there are lots of reasons why that could be the case. Lack of interest, lack of money, lack of one specific feature, inability to use subscriber identity modules, lack of availability of a specific handset or programming network, contract terms, sticker shock and lack of awareness all can be barriers to triple or quad play adoption.

Real-Time Services: Bandwidth is Not Enough

Real-time services are the future of private and public IP networks. Just as certainly, users are starting to recognize that raw bandwidth is not enough. Quality of experience hinges centrally on quality of service, typically requiring class-of-service mechanisms, virtual private networks and application-aware control of bandwidth parameters.

Thinking Phone Networks might provide an example. The Covad partner offers voice-optimized access and has increased its customer base using that feature by 200 percent in the past two years.

“We believe this expansion will continue as more nationwide customers appreciate the quality and reliability of Thinking Phone services made possible by Covad,” says Steven Kokinos, Thinking Phone Networks CEO.

Thinking Phone Networks’ customers utilize its voice services to connect multi-site
locations, remote workers, and home offices. The issue there is "multiple sites." It's one thing to assure bandwidth quality at a headquarters site. It is quite another to ensure that home office and distributed associates have that same level of access to quality bandwidth.

It isn't clear how well most users understand that, yet, but greater experience, followed by word of mouth and other "social" mechanisms inevitably will create a market for "real time services" bandwidth that is different from "best effort" access.

Covad’s "Voice Optimized Access" product provides the dedicated bandwidth Internet connection that powers VoIP services from more than 50 wholesale partners nationwide.

Subscriptions, Not Ads Drive Cable, Telco Video

There is a notion, incorrect, that advertising revenues will be a big contributor to telco revenue streams as those firms scale up the size of their video entertainment customer base.

Some of the understandable confusion results from glancing at cable industry statistics on overall revenue, including programming networks and cable operators.

While it is true that programming networks derive a huge chunk of their revenue from advertising, cable operators really do not benefit as much.

As this Time Warner Cable chart suggests, advertising actually is quite a small part of the overall revenue mix, and has dropped, percentage-wise, as newer businesses such as high-speed Internet access service and voice have grown.

It's a nice revenue contributor, to be sure. But arguably not more important than churn reduction and retention, in terms of overall revenue contribution. Certainly it is not more important than voice and high-speed data services, going forward.