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As Disney lays out its plans for the future, they see mobile content delivery as a key compontent of their roadmap calling it a $27 billion dollar market by 2010.
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=112443
Mobile phones are being used in innovative ways. I talked to a Japanese businessman a few weeks ago who pays for his dinner in Tokyo with his cell phone.
I was just drafting a press release for a wonderful new set of episodes entitled “The Future of Mobile Connectivity” for the program New Media Currents and I was looking to verify research showing that the number of mobile devices or mobile subscribers is surpassing or has surpassed the number of TV sets in the world. Here is some of the research I have found.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=707714
Of course, you all know it is widely predicted that the number of mobile devices will double from two billion to four billion in the next 5 years. As far as what I saw for number of radios worldwide, the results are mixed, but I saw one credible estimate of 2.5 billion radios. It makes sense that there are more radios since I have at least 5 between my clock radio, FM walkman, car stereo, livingroom receiver, etc. The current episode of new media currents talks about how consumers are using their two billion mobile devices in surprising ways, such as tracking elephants in Africa or buying golf balls at the driving range in Germany. Africa is the largest growth area. Check it out:
Last night I went to a corporate event Mobile Platforms: The New Frontier for Software and Services at Adobe. One thing that really struck me is the capabilities of flash for mobile devices. I saw a demo of a flash movie being played on a not-overly-sophisticated cell phone. The current limitation I see with mp3 and MPEG-4 (audio and video standards for podcasting and videocasting respectively) is there is no adopted standard for inserting hyperlinks into these media files. True, ID3 tags have been around for a while and can contain hyperlinks, but iTunes and Windows Media Player don’t support clickable hyperlinks that fire up a browser – especially not on mobile devices.
Flash does support embedded hyperlinks and the big news here is that flash runs well on the current generation of cell phones. What does this mean for marketers and consumers? One of the limitations of podcasting and videocasting is if you hear/see something you like and you want to buy it, you have to write down or memorize the URL, go to your computer and fire up your browser to get more info or to purchase. Usually doesn’t happen. Marketers have been frustrated that there is no direct link between the content and the point of sale conversion. Now there is. Consumers will like this because if they want to act on something they see or make a purchasing decision, they can do so with little effort. Basically, this is a huge enabler of ecommerce on cell phones. Imagine if you’re watching a show sponsored by Nike and you want to buy an Air Jordan duffle bag. This is just a click away.
It’s a significant development since cell phones are the most ubiquitous device with 4 billion mobile subscribers forecasted for 2011 — you can bet many of them will be media enabled. We discussed the farmer in India who has little technology except for his cell phone where he performs stock trades on Indian fiancial markets from the back of his donkey. That’s the future and that’s where we’re going. For now, we’ll have to dig in some more to see just what Adobe can do on cell phones today.