The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

Finally, some real numbers regarding these threats are shared in an article in the WSJ Online today (subscription required) by reporter Li Yuan.  Sony Ericsson has sold 16.5 million Walkman phones in 14 months (not bad!), Motorola has sold 15 million MP3 enabled phones to date.  Nokia is projecting that in 2006 they will have sold 80 million music phones, which means that in 1 year, they will have outperformed the cumulative sales of Apple iPods (approxmiately 70 million).  So, between the 3 largest cellphone handset manufacturers, that means that there are approximately 110 million MP3 enabled phones on the market today and growing rapidly.

Will Apple roll out the iPhone soon?  One would expect they cannot ignore these numbers  - it certainly is momentum that will not stop.

In the article, the Yuan mentions that Motorola states that about 50% of the MP3 enabled phones are used for music playing purposes - so true penetration and use of a multimedia phone is still some ways off.

As we’ve said here many times - the end game portable media device is the cell phone - not the iPod or other MP3 player.

Well, Reuters breaks some news picked up by CNET which opens my eyes to some of the barriers for cell phone use and penetration in what would be considered 3rd world countries.  It appears that state-owned telcos are not happy with other wireless carriers operating their own gateways to the world.  Hey - you let the competition in, Zimbabwe.  Now you have to pay the price.

Well, no great surpise as this from Matt Richtel of the NY Times has been discussed in the blogosphere for several weeks now.  But, what I want to comment on here is that Verizon won’t have the lock on this for long (blinding glimpse of the obvious, BGO for you Barbarians at the Gates fans) and YouTube and other aggregation points will be readily accessed by cell phones soon and without too much muss or fuss.

Look for this to be the norm before long WITHOUT Verizon’s $15 surcharge….

Apparently, in the world of Web 2.0 (or other semi-relevant monikers), the rules are changing.  Surprise, Surprise, Surprise. Back in the 90’s, Mark Cuban was fond of saying “Content is King”.  While I can’t say if this slogan is attributed to him, it was and has been the rule of the web.  Today, that slogan is officially aged and cracking.

This morning, Rafat Ali, of Paid Content scoops Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang in his research article on how Aggregation and Context is the highest value in the information chain.  I use the word “scoop” because it showed up on TechMeme first and now the Bear Stears blog is the headliner.  Shows you how I rate and rank my content, eh?

This confirms what I’ve been believing and therefore modifying the MPReach business plan accordingly.  Watch this space for announcement of new audio/video/text networks that we’ll be launching (can’t call the digital media “podcasting or video podcasting, as Apple Computer might decide they own me….)

One of my favorite debates comes front and center in a New York Times article written by Matt Richtel today, which initially focuses on the wave of wi-fi enabled phones.  Belkin has a new wi-fi phone out and T-Mobile as announced a trial in Seattle where their wi-fi enabled phones will switch out between cell coverage and wi-fi coverage as needed to extend coverage areas, particularly in hard-to-reach areas such as homes and businesses.

At the heart of this new wave of coverage extension lies the question of switching between wi-fi networks.  In the case mentioned at the beginning of the article, a reporter tests the Belkin on the front lawn of a New York Times employee, essentially “stealing” his bandwidth.  Didn’t even leave a quarter on the front steps out of courtesy.   

I’m a big fan of using bandwidth I’ve paid for.  Others don’t seem to mind and use the argument “whoever setup the wi-fi router didn’t configure security to be enabled, so they must have been ok with me using it” or something like that.  That argument and others like it are not taking into account the ease of installation of one of those devices and ignorance of the need to set it up.  Do-it-yourself technology is great in one way, but it creates a lot of neophite adopters in the process - and unfortunately the more sophisticated seem to take advantage of disparity in the knowledge delta.

You can take the amount of blog headlines (or mainstream media for that matter, but I wouldn’t expect it too much from them) on RSS one of two ways.  Either a) it has now become “table stakes” and the technology crowd assumes you’re using it - OR - b) it is not mainstream for anyone else to use other than the crowd in a). (Which assumes you’re using it, but may be mistaken).

While IE7 makes it “daily life” compatible, this post from Stuart Brown lists all the specialty applications that pick up RSS.  The title of his post suggests otherwise, but it really is only a product comparison.  It appears that IE7 doesn’t have wide enough spread adoption to make it into his Feedburner list of applications used while subscribing to his blog.  Frank Gruber, from Somewhat Frank also comments with a similar discussion, but at least mentions IE7.

My question (formed by running a podcasting business) is what is the real adoption rate of RSS and will the mainstream truly see the advantage that most of us geeks and semi-geeks see?  Stay tuned.