Let Your Mobile Entertain You!

Move over mobile music and gaming, there is a new timepass on the go. With the launch of 3G services, mobile TV is just around the corner!

Mobile entertainment has evolved in many ways. Initially, way back in the nineties, the only form of mobile entertainment was ringtones and wallpapers. Today, music and gaming are considered as the biggest drivers of mobile entertainment. Operators are striving to deliver exciting services such as streaming audio and video, multiplayer games and mobile gambling across high-speed networks on advanced handsets.

With the launch of 3G services, the market is only going to gain momentum. These services will revolutionalise the way we entertain ourselves. Telecom operator MTNL in India has already rolled out 3G services in Mumbai. The IP-based mobile next-generation network solution, provided by Alcatel-Lucent, will equip MTNL with substantial operator benefits in network optimisation, bandwidth savings and reduced space and power requirements.

Subscription to 3G service means you can make video calls, view Live TV channels on your mobile, and download songs and data from the Internet at speeds up to 2 Mbps, amongst many other applications involving high-speed data downloads.

3G service launch is just one of the many recent market drivers. The mobile entertainment landscape is brimming with lot many activities and offerings. Read on to explore them one by one. 

Services under the umbrella
Broadly, mobile entertainment services can be divided into the following key categories: mobile music, mobile TV, mobile games, mobile gambling, mobile adult services, mobile user-generated content and mobile infotainment. Currently, the market is dominated by music, games and infotainment. However, with the increasing adoption of 3G, this will shift in favour of mobile video and TV.

Live TV on Nokia N77 mobile phone

Market size and forecasts
Juniper Research estimates that the total global mobile entertainment market is currently worth over $17 billion. It reckons this market to be worth $47.5 billion by 2010.

According to its latest report on mobile entertainment, under a worst-case scenario of a prolonged global recession, mobile entertainment revenues would increase by nearly $13 billion over the next five years, as against a pre-downturn forecast of more than $26 billion.

Music on Samsung i450

Market players include telecom operators, handset manufacturers, telecom equipment providers, and applications and content providers, who are constantly innovating and enhancing their offerings for increased revenues.

Mobile music: the most popular of the lot
Without any doubt, mobile music is the most popular of the entertainment services in the Indian market. It has gradually evolved from mono ringtones to advanced services such as ring-back tones, streaming audio and full-track downloads.

Worldwide mobile music revenue stood at $11.7 billion at end-2008 and is forecast to hit $19.2 billion at end-2013.

Music on mobile could be in the form of mobile ringtones, ringback tones, paid-for-full track downloads, subscription-based full track services and music videos. You can purchase the music for outright ownership or subscribe to music libraries for a certain period.

Streaming vs download. While the basic cellphones play music only as ringtones, cellphones touted as ‘music phones’ let you stream or download music files over the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection or 3G cellphone connection. These can also import audio files stored on your PC.

Streaming makes music available on your cellphone in real time, over different types of networks. The audio file is not stored on your cellphone, so in order to listen again, you need to reconnect to the streaming server and initiate (and pay for) another streaming session.

While streaming makes music available in real time, download allows you to enjoy the music repeatedly. Music is stored on the mobile phone, in the built-in memory or on a removable memory stick. However, downloading large music files can take quite some time.

With efforts to increase bandwidth on networks and hence increase streaming/download speeds, entirely new issues arise. Sample one: who will purchase a song on a cellphone when it can be streamed for free, anytime and at any place?

Players in mobile music services

Content providers: Universal Music Group, EMI Music, Sony BMG Operators: Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Verizon Wireless Aggregators: Buongiorno, Myxer Vendors: Apple, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia Application providers: Musiwave, napster, RealNetworks Billing providers: Bango, mBlox

Mobile gaming: next in popularity
Mobile games are video games played on mobile phones. These are growing fast and are expected to become as big a market as mobile music. The value of the worldwide mobile gaming market reached $5.5 billion at the end of 2008 and is expected to grow to $9.8 billion by the end of 2013.

Since Nokia launched Snake on its handsets in 1997, mobile gaming has evolved beyond recognition. Today, various options are available for mobile games. Common ones are:
1. Embedded games. Games preinstalled on the mobile handset; for example, Snake, shipped with Nokia phones
2. SMS-based games. Games played by sending text messages; for example, live contests and polls, wherein SMS messages are sent to the game server, which processes them and sends back the result through SMS
3. Browser-based games. Games played using the mobile phone’s built-in Net browser, either in online or offline mode. You can play these games online through your cellular carrier’s or the game provider’s website, or download them for offline gaming. Options available are solo or multiplayer games, network games, offline games, arcade games and so forth

Among these, embedded games are going to become obsolete, while browser games are the most popular because of their multimedia-rich content, appealing presentation and lower cost of gaming than SMS-based games.

Gaming on Sony Ericsson F305

Mobile games can be developed using C++, J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) and the BREW platform from Qualcomm.

To enhance the gaming experience, Sony Ericsson has come up with a mobile phone with gesture gaming—Yari. With gesture gaming, you move your body to play instead of pressing buttons on the phone. Yari also features a 5-megapixel camera and music player.

Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara Technologies and convenor of Mobile Sub-Committee, IT Committee, Indian Merchant’s Chamber, says 3D mobile games and multiplayer games on larger-screen-size mobiles with improving GPRS networks are the latest trends in India. Nazara Technologies is working towards this by relating the games with Bollywood celebrities like Sameera Reddy, mythological characters like Eklavya, and sports celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar and M.S. Dhoni.

Mobile video: 3G comes as a big push
Detractors of mobile video had previously cited poor handset quality as one of the biggest reasons why these services are yet to take off. However, with the launch of more viewer-friendly handsets, mobile video services are expected to gain popularity.

Kaustubh Kashyap, head-product management, mLifestyle, Comviva, forecasts that worldwide revenues from mobile video will nearly triple to reach $18.2 billion by end-2013, up from $6.7 billion at end-2008.

The advent of 3G networks worldwide is driving mobile video services such as mobile TV and video SMS. Mobile TV could be streamed over the mobile network or a proprietary network. The mobile network must be 2.5G or 3G. Mobile TV standards include DVB-H, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) and MediaFLO.

However, mobile TV poses challenges for handset manufacturers and content providers alike. To be feasible, it requires high processing power, low power consumption (improved battery life), large memory for long hours of TV viewing, and improved LCD and user interface of the handset. The wider and clearer LCD touchscreens will be preferred by the users but, at the same time, these should not make the handset very bulky. iPhone’s growing popularity is a case in point.

Content providers need to develop the content specifically tailored for mobile TVs, such as mobile episodes of popular shows which are relatively shorter in length (3 to 5 minutes).

China Telecom has rolled out high-end 3G video streaming services across mainland China. Its subscribers now have access to richer mobile applications such as live mobile TV, video on demand and download, thanks to the 3G CDMA EVDO video streaming service delivered by Nokia Siemens Networks.

The centralised 3G CDMA EVDO video streaming platform supports nationwide diversified audio/video format, with quality that is at least 50 per cent higher than the traditional 2G solution, the company claims.

Mobile TV is also available for the Indian consumers. ROK Entertainment Group, a mobile technologies, applications and services company, has launched Tiny TV across India with BSNL. Tiny TV is claimed to be the first nationwide, subscription-based, mobile TV service in India to be streamed over mass-market 2.5G GPRS.

Offering a range of live and on-demand mobile TV channels to include local and international news, sports, music and movies, Tiny TV is priced at Rs 150 per month payable via reverse-bill SMS.

Specifically, Tiny TV channels include News 24 (Hindi news), E-24 (Bollywood entertainment), ROK Bollywood (celebrity news), Geet (Hindi songs), Green (evergreen Bollywood music), Red (latest music from Bollywood), Gyan (devotional), regional channels of Gujarati and Marathi for West India, Bengali for the East Zone, Tiny Sports TV, Tiny Comedy, Mobifun and Movie Channel offering a regularly updated list of full-length movies wherein you can pause, fast forward and rewind, plus a Sony package.

Social networking: catching up
Internet social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace are also turning mobile. So you can now converse and connect with individuals of similar interest using the mobile phone.

RockeTalk, a Mobile 2.0 provider of mobile social applications, has launched free mobile social networking application in India. The RockeTalk application allows mobile phone users to meet and interact with new people through instant text, voice, picture and video messaging. Users can also create and share their own content with friends and family, and join and interact with mobile communities. Through this application, user can send content to other RockeTalk users, or to anyone’s email address.

Apple iPhone 3G

LG KT610 and KF750 (Secret) mobile phones, pre-loaded with RockeTalk, are already available to consumers in India. The latest version of the RockeTalk application to be preloaded on these LG mobile phones now includes a multiple Instant Messenger (IM) chat feature compatible with Yahoo!, Google Talk, MSN, AIM and ICQ.

MCliques’ communication tool ‘Cellmate’ allows users to build and access social networks on an ordinary mobile phone with no Internet connectivity.

Cellmate—a peer-to-peer mobile social networking application—offers features like sending instant messages, setting up group reminders, RSVPs, taking polls among group mates, sharing a checklist or to-do list for a group project, and conducting group discussions just like on Web forums. The platform also makes available the chronological history of all the messages and replies exchanged related to a particular message.

Unlike many other mobile group products, Cellmate does not require users to sign up for a wireless Internet plan as the product works on top of good-old SMS functionality.

Cellmate can run on any mobile phone that supports J2ME (Java) run time—the most ubiquitous mobile platform today. Most handsets, including many lower-end handsets, come with Java runtime pre-installed.

Mobile gaming value chain (Source: Comviva)

Key to success
Major constraints in the adoption of mobile entertainment services include access to the various content on offer, user interface, handset form factor, storage capacity, battery life, network speed and coverage, and cost of data services.

If a user finds it difficult to navigate the way to the content, the likelihood of actually consuming content drops dramatically. For this reason, Comviva has developed its aggregated voice applications network, which brings a myriad of applications together on a single platform, overcoming the significant hurdles that exist for the operator in integrating and managing providers of different applications and at the same time simplifying access to voice-based applications for subscribers.

Dr Vinod V. Vasudevan, group CEO, Flytxt, says that need of the hour is more creative thinking to adapt entertainment to mobile. One big obstacle is creating business models and infrastructures that can deliver the content reliably and securely.

Because of this constraint, it needs a lot of creative thinking from marketers to attract subscribers to avail entertainment services. Key lies in identifying the subscribers’ needs and promoting the right infotainment services to them!