Last week business watchers from Bloomberg to The Wall Street Journal, started reporting that the "wave of cell pone start-ups" counting on iFilm and YouTube style home movies and bloopers plus music videos to lure users has begun to flounder. Mobile video startups from Amp'd Mobile to Mobile ESPN have signed up fewer than 10,000 new subscribers apiece.
Even though the advertising to support mobile content has taken off to the tune of an estimated $10 billion over the next four years, carriers don't seem to be the beneficiaries.
Specialized mobile content providers such as WizWak.com and AtomFilms to Go are the ones posting black ink. That's bad news for Cingular, Verizon and Nextel but I think it's good news for short filmmakers. Because it means that that the "wow factor" of a new technology has worn off and users are migrating away from video scrap to higher quality offerings.
The explosion of specialized niche content providers seems posed to relegate Verizon Cingular and others to little more than service provider status. A recent report from Detecon Consulting lays the phenomenon out in relatively plain English:
"The walled garden approach to exclusive content and entertainment with service offerings is not working, as entertainment options proliferate and the mobile operators face competition from more versatile devices like BlackBerries, WiFi-equipped PSP's, and Video iPods."
That's a fancy way of saying that subscriber dependant service like Mobile ESPN, simply isn't equipped to compete with the built-in versatility of a company like NanoTV.
Even though the advertising to support mobile content has taken off to the tune of an estimated $10 billion over the next four years, carriers don't seem to be the beneficiaries.
Specialized mobile content providers such as WizWak.com and AtomFilms to Go are the ones posting black ink. That's bad news for Cingular, Verizon and Nextel but I think it's good news for short filmmakers. Because it means that that the "wow factor" of a new technology has worn off and users are migrating away from video scrap to higher quality offerings.
The explosion of specialized niche content providers seems posed to relegate Verizon Cingular and others to little more than service provider status. A recent report from Detecon Consulting lays the phenomenon out in relatively plain English:
"The walled garden approach to exclusive content and entertainment with service offerings is not working, as entertainment options proliferate and the mobile operators face competition from more versatile devices like BlackBerries, WiFi-equipped PSP's, and Video iPods."
That's a fancy way of saying that subscriber dependant service like Mobile ESPN, simply isn't equipped to compete with the built-in versatility of a company like NanoTV.
