No love lost on mobile live tv in Holland

No less than 62 pct of the Dutch households are familiar with facility of watching live tv on mobiles. But only 6 pct of the mobile users are willing to use it. That is the result of Ernst & Young Mediabarometer, a quarterly survey about developments of the media- and entertainment market among 2000 respondents.

1 of the 5 respondents which have a mobile phone, has a UMTS/3G device and is able to view live television streams through internet. Of this group, however, almost half of the group (47 pct) does watch video scenes on the mobile occasionally. Especially they download or stream amateur movies, as can be seen on YouTube, and humour movies are popular. On average those people spend 15 minutes per session; non 3G users estimate that they will watch video on their mobile phone for 20 minutes. Of the group of mobile callers who do not have a 3G telephone, half indicate that they will view videos about news and sports on the mobile. However the picture of these wannahaves, does not stroke with the habits of present 3G users, as only 6 pct of the users will view live streams from television.

Of course one should be critical about this survey. The survey claims have 400 respondents with a 3G mobile and using this occasionally for 15 minutes for video. This number of users is very high and one can wonder whether this number is representative for the mobile population. Perhaps the panel existed of early adaptors.

This survey is no good news for broadcast companies, which think that they may have found a new outlet. On the other hand the broadcast companies should not be surprised. Standardisation was still in process. Early user research in 2005 by the Finnish mobile company Elisa, was not very encouraging. During this research the company found that television broadcasts were mainly viewed during the late night. The fact that live television programs have a fixed time programming time might be part of the problem. Of course, the costs might also pose a problem.

In Finland the mobile and broadcast companies still expect a lot of mobile television. There is a Finnish Mobile TV community, founded by Forum Virium Helsinki and some of the key players in the sector. The goal is to promote the creation of innovative and interactive content for mobile TV in cooperation with Finnish and international service developers. The two-year Finnish Mobile TV project was launched in November 2005. It was inspired by an extensive user pilot, launched with the goal of collecting information on the experiences of end users. The findings indicated that the users want more varied content for their mobile TV and are prepared to pay for the services. During 2006 the Finnish Mobile TV project supported service developers by providing DVB-H network capacity, and also started an active developer forum with opportunities to network. During 2007 the project will again focus on the end users of mobile TV, especially regarding consumer feedback on interactive services. Current participants in the project include: Digita, Elisa, City of Helsinki, IBM, MTV3, Nokia, SWelcom, TeliaSonera, Destia, TietoEnator, Veikkaus, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, WM-Data, YIT and the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. In addition to Forum Virium Helsinki, project funding is provided by the participating companies, while some individual projects also receive funding from public sources. The piloting activities in 2007 are partly funded by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.

Addition: August 27, 2007: I just read the blog Reiter's Mobile TV Report. It had a comment on mobile tv, taken from the British Ofcom Report: The 330–page Office of Communications’ (Ofcom) “Communications Market Report” (available in three sections plus summaries) didn’t devote much space to mobile TV, but the space it did devote indicated mobile TV is way, way down on cellular users’ consciousness and use.
Only ten percent of cellular users surveyed for the report were even aware their phone could play mobile TV. That’s the lowest percentage of awareness for the 13 features in the survey. But that’s a high percentage compared to those who actually watched any mobile TV — two percent.
Just notice that 62 percent of the Dutch people are aware of live tv on a mobile telephone. In the UK only 10 percent are aware of the facility.

Blog Posting Number 849

Tags: mobile television

Good news for 20+ million European gamers

Game Entertainment Europe (GEE), the first pan-European publisher of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) Games, and Spill group, the largest game traffic generator in the world, signed a promotion contract which states that SPILL GROUP promotes the MMO Games published by GEE on all of their European portals and in return Spill group receives a revenue share. The contract is already effective, GEE’s latest MMORP Game Martial Heroes can now be played through Spill group’s European portals such as http://www.agame.com/, http://www.spelletjes.nl/, http://www.jeux.fr/. The first results are excellent, after 4 weeks promotion in The Netherlands GEE’s game Martial Heroes has 35.000 new registrations. Soon other online games will follow.

The MMO Games that GEE publishes are of great graphical quality and deserve a wide audience. The MMO Games are being developed in Korea. Since Spill group’s monthly reach is still growing massively and is up to more than 25 million unique visitors per month globally, both parties are excited about the cooperation.

Game Entertainment Europe offers online community games (MMO Games) to gamers in Europe. To offer the best game experience, the games are localised for the European countries. Game Entertainment Europe organises online billing, game mastering, user and community support as well as in-game events. The company’s head office is based in Amsterdam and recently opened an office in Korea. Game Entertainment is also participating in a chain of European game cafes. More information can be found on http://www.ge-eu.com/.

The Dutch holding company Spill Group was founded in 2001 and has subsidiaries in Europe and Asia. Its aim is to become the number one player in game traffic and online game advertising inventory. Currently, the company develops and runs more than forty gaming portals in European and Asia. Over 25 million unique visitors per month look for gaming entertainment on the Spill Group’s game portals. The current portfolio contains 3.000 online games of all genres – skill games, casual games and fun games. The portals are kept simple and are specifically designed for every country. Those wanting to play a game do not need to register, but can start right away. Look for examples of the game portals on http://www.agame.com/, http://www.gry.pl/, or http://www.jetztspielen.de/.

Over in Finland
It looks like Nokia is going at it again. Having launched the game mobile N-Gage, the mobile has not been the success, the makers dreamt of. Now Nokia is re-defining the mobile gaming experience, still using the N-Gage. Starting in 2007, Nokia will allow consumers to easily find, buy, play and manage great quality mobile games on upcoming Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and other Nokia S60 devices. Consumers will be able to connect to the N-Gage Arena, Nokia's mobile, global gaming community. Nokia is working with the world's leading publishers, including Electronic Arts and Gameloft, to deliver a broad portfolio of games.

Nokia and the Finnish telecom company Elisa have announced that they will carry out a pilot of Nokia's new N-Gage mobile gaming service. The pilot will start in February 2007 and run until mid 2007.

Elisa will combine its existing mobile gaming platform with the Nokia N-Gage gaming platform and carry out intensive testing and evaluation in a live network environment. Nokia and Elisa will work together to bring a superior mobile gaming experience for Elisa customers. Nokia device owners can look forward to improved game quality, outstanding performance and an intuitive way to get games.

With the scheduled launch in mid 2007, Nokia's next generation mobile gaming platform makes it easy for people to find, buy, play and share rich and immersive games on a range of Nokia devices. Elisa intends to support the launch with a full service offering through its own portals in addition to the N-Gage application installed on Nokia devices.

Blog Posting Number: 677

Tags: games, mobile, mobile games