Video in the Consumer Mobility Experience
On this blog, we tend to focus most heavily on the business mobility or business-class wireless experience. Given, at Cisco, we play a key role in the business IT marketplace, it is not surprising to work this aperture.
Mobility just as much as many social networking or Web 2.0 technologies really has a strong consumer angle. Even in the Enterprise WLAN segment was driven by the broadband rollout (extending the connection across the household) and was marketed brilliantly by Intel with its pervasive Centrino campaign.
When I look at my teenagers, I find they have a deeper and wider social fabric with their friends then I did at their age. My daughter writes a fashion blog that is read around the world and my son seems to run the Golden State Warriors middle school fan club from his cell phone via text messaging.
One of the key debates in the industry resides around the role video will play in Mobility. Despite Matt Glenn’s non-furtive jabs at my perspective on video mail, I do think that a lot of consumer content may not be appropriate for the small screen and business applications will be. When the video iPod came out, I rushed to put a few films on it for a trip to Asia. What a rude surprise. Try watching Pirates of the Caribbean on a 2.5 inch square screen. Mobility is an extension of the Internet and the TV/Cable network, but it is not a substitute. While you may be willing to watch certain items on a small screen, it might be only when there is no alternative.
Interestingly, I think a lot of training and messaging Video-on-Demand (VODs) are probably highly appropriate, much more than entertainment or even sports. Real-time mobile face-to-face video conference will also be compellling, especially if the alternative is just a call. When the actual experience matters, the dramatic drop in flat panel pricing is one sweet gift. While lots of applications will morph to mobile devices, a smart phone is not a clean substitute for a computer or television monitor.
Yes, there are lots of hybrid devices – including those cool Sony Vaios – coming, but is Spiderman really Spiderman if you miss most of the web-spinning, falling-through-air approach.
So I think short video mails and training kinds of videos will take off on mobile devices, and we will see a reversal of trends where business markets lead consumer markets in video applications.
In the words of no less an entertainment genius than Groucho Marx:
“Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… now you tell me what you know. “
Posted by Alan Cohen at 05:07PM PST
jakeson Jul 24, 2007
yes this is a good thing for entertainment .you know that how much teenagers likes mobility.