Last winter's Vancouver Olympics had some great moments: Lindsay Vonn and Bode Miller picking up golds. Joannie Rochette's final. Ovechkin's hit on Jagr.
And according to a briefing this week from NBC, millions of you were watching this on the tiny screen.
Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development of NBC Universal, told a conference on the mobile Internet that mobile viewership of the Olympics surged between the 2008 Beijing Games and Vancouver. During the Beijing summer games, NBC reported that 15 percent of viewers watched events through their mobile devices.
Just 18 months later in Vancouver, that number almost doubled to 27 percent. About 1.2 million mobile users used a Winter Olympics mobile app, also a large increase from 2008.
NBC's figures are in keeping with other evidence of the boom in mobile web usage. Nielsen estimates cited by Wurtzel peg the growth of mobile web users during the same period at nearly 50 percent (49 million users to 72 million).
So the mobile revolution accelerates. And to think: The London Olympics begin on July 27, 2012, or almost exactly two years from today.
The conference tournaments are over, Selection Sunday has come and gone, and friends (and foes) across the country are preparing their brackets for March Madness. Whether you are a basketball buff trained in the arts of “bracketology” or simply like to pit mascot against mascot to decide who will be the next national champion, mobile devices are making it easier than ever to follow games, scores, and updates throughout the NCAA tournament.
Cbssports.com has a user-friendly mobile website where you can customize alerts, track scores, and find out about all of the options available for maximizing usage of your mobile device during this exciting season. Additionally, the website easily redirects you to pages that allow you to download applications to your Blackberry, iPhone, and more.
So while your mobile device may be unable to formulate that witty retort you need should your championship pick go down in the first round, its real-time capabilities can deter you from making an uninformed comment after the fact (or perhaps from leaving your house, if it’s really bad…). Let the games begin!
The Mobile Future Coalition is live-tweeting the Progress & Freedom Foundation's panel, "Let's Make a Deal: Broadcasters, Mobile Broadband, and a Market in Spectrum."
Follow along on @mobilefuture - and if you haven't already follow our twitter feed to stay up to date on the latest news in wireless innovation.
Remember Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD? How about Beta vs. VHS?
For anyone who gets frustrated when industries can't agree on consumer product standards, this is good news: Mobile users who want to stream TV won't have to deal with annoying format disputes.
"Manufacturers and broadcasters had already been moving forward with the preliminary technical standard for Mobile Digital Television, but now the standard has been finalized by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC).
"Friday's formal announcement of the standard adoption by ATSC means that everyone can move forward knowing that the technical specs are set in stone."
Look at how fast this is progressing. In January, not a single local TV station beamed mobile phone-ready video. By mid-summer, mobile users in Raleigh, NC and Washington, DC became the first to enjoy mobile TV and by year's end, consumers in nearly 30 of the nation's top markets will have this option.
With your mobile phone, you can take care of banking, pay for parking, board a plane and stream old Saved by the Bell episodes. (OK, three out of four ain't bad.)
Until recently at least, conventional wisdom held that short and light content would be most popular on the mobile screen. But consumer tastes have a way of confounding conventional wisdom, at least according to an interesting article in MediaWatch.
According to Nielsen figures, longer drama programs are turning out to be the most popular mobile videos. That includes CSI, Heroes, and Lipstick Jungle. In a nod to the mobile lifestyle, CBS is also making viewing easier by dividing shows into shorter streams - a typical CSI episode has six or seven individual streams that allow viewers to pick up exactly where they left off earlier in the day.
Nielsen estimates that only about five percent of mobile users access video. But when you look at how quickly other apps like banking are taking off, it won't be long before CSI overtakes crosswords as the most popular pastime during the morning commute.
It's a new day and things will never again be the same.
No, I'm not talking about the new Administration since others at HuffPo have already captured that moment's magic. Instead I'm talking about the inauguration itself. Matt Richtel at The New York Times had it right - it was "a wireless Woodstock."
When it came to coverage, the three traditional news sources - the TV nets, radio, the wires - had company: the mobile phone user.
Never in U.S. history has a single event been so well documented from so many different angles as this inauguration. More important, never before have ordinary onlookers been so integral to the coverage.
For mobile users and app writers alike, this was the equivalent of opening night on Broadway. Take a look:
A company called PointAbout created a special GPS-related app for the inauguration that guided users to the Mall via Metro or street directions. It also offered to find free hotspots, inaugural balls and the nearest Starbucks.
CNN, The New York Times and other MSM actively solicited emails of real-time photos and commentary. Leading up to the inaugural, their homepages encouraged mobile users to send clips, vids and comments. Throughout the day, they displayed the images.
The image-sharing site Photobucket put its Inauguration Day photos on a separate, dedicated server. No word on how many photos have been uploaded but the company usually handles 7-10 million uploads a day.
The social media website FriendFeed rolled out a 300 percent increase in server capacity to handle inaugural and post-inaugural traffic.
None of this happened by accident. CNN reported that mobile carriers increased capacity by as much as 70 percent and it seems to have paid off.
So in addition to the inauguration staff, there's one more group that deserves to take a bow: tens of thousands of mobile users who gave the nation a unique view of a great event.
Originally posted on Huffington Post, January 22, 2009
To paraphrase a famous movie line, "Video's still big. It's the screen that got small."
An interesting report on the continued growth of mobile video came from Nielsen this week. As of third quarter 2008, people who used a mobile phone spent three hours per month on average watching mobile video. (By comparison, the average viewer spent 142 hours watching TV.)
But look at the trend: From Q2 to Q3, average mobile video usage increased from 195 to 217 minutes - an 11 percent increase and a pretty good quarterly growth rate!
The age breakdown isn't surprising, as younger viewers are the dominant video consumers, although the 18-24 figure seems oddly low:
Age
Average monthly usage
13-17
260 minutes
18-24
195 minutes
25-34
260 minutes
35-44
227 minutes
45-54
130 minutes
55-64
173 minutes
65+
Negligible
The real issue is how this surging growth will impact the wireless network. Video is data-intensive and according to PBS tech guru Robert Cringley, three Sling streams are enough to crash a typical EVDO cell. Also there’s the cost: It's a lot more expensive to deliver data wirelessly than on a fiber optic line.
We'll address these issues in upcoming blogs but for the moment, we’ll let this report speak for itself.
As always, we like to keep you informed about upcoming events in the district of communications.
Accordingly, the folks at Media Future Now will host a panel discussion on Tuesday, July 22 titled: "3G: Mobile Media in Motion." This discussion looks to cover a wide spectrum of issues in social media, mobile broadcasting and mobile marketing. I have the pleasure of sitting down with Michael Collins (Kinetic Mobile) and Peter Corbett (iStrategylabs), both successful entrepreneurs who have done some great things in wireless, advertising and social media.
With that in mind, my remarks will be focused on mobile broadcasting and how wireless can augment citizen journalism (expanding on my remarks at the Free Press Conference last month).
Visit the Media Future Now site for more information and to RSVP...
Hope to see U there!
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Here is the 411:
When: Tuesday, July 22, 12:15-1:45 p.m.
Where: The offices of Quinn Gillespie & Associates, 1133 Connecticut Ave., NW
On Friday, I attended Blog Potomacover at the State Theater in Falls Church. Blog Potomac is a gatheringof local bloggers and social media experts discussing the latest trendsand best practices.
With that in mind, I had the opportunity to do a brief mobile broadcast with Maggie Fox (CEO, Social Media Group). Maggie is a social media guru and has developed some high-profile marketing campaigns for Ford and other companies.
Inthe following interview, I asked Maggie about the mobile opportunityand whether companies were utilizing this channel. She gives her takeand videoblogger extraodinaire Jonny Goldstein decided to capture the action via Utterz (a member of Mobile Future).
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Tags: Applications, Mobile Broadband, Mobile TV, Smartphone, Wireless Innovation