Wi-Fi, Podcasting, and phones
Saturday, July 29, the NY Times had an interesting article that generated some buzz. You might look at the title of this post and wonder the connection between the three. Well, let me explain. There has been a lot of discussion both here and other blogs, articles, etc. regarding phones as media players. As a matter of fact, as many of you may know, I believe it will ultimately replace the autonomous mp3/mp3 player market.
3G wireless systems have been the buzz in the U.S. for 6 years or more. Will WI-FI or WIMAX over mobile handsets make 3G irrelevant? In the short term, probably not. In the long term? Maybe so. By demanding access to multi-media files on the handsets, consumers will definitely be pressing for this ability. I don’t think 3G has the download speeds to satisfy over the long haul.
As podcasting becomes more mainstream, this too will increase demand from consumers for true broadband (1.5 MBps download speeds) over their wireless systems that support their phone calls. I believe the downloads/portability drives this, rather than “streaming live” in the short term - in that too many things have to be perfect to support that. I can’t always get a perfect live streaming experience over a wired broadband connection today - I think the frustrations would be disastrous in today’s U.S wireless market.
That being said, Japan has been watching live video on their cell phones for 6 or 7 years now. South Korea appears to have at least 1 million receivers (as of June 2006) that have been sold to utilize a system that allows this.
Everyone is trying to get everyone else to adopt their standard. Standardization gets to be a problem when pride gets in our way. On top of that, we have business models that “guaranteed” a certain return to investors - they’re not going to be happy about watching that change. That is a macro discussion that will affect Wi-FI, podcasting, and phones. If the current wireless carriers push the consumers to accept less speed for downloads by lobbying against WI-FI or WIMAX adoption, then the consumer will suffer and the related adoption of media downloads of all types to phones will be delayed. Hmm. Big potential problem, don’t you think?