The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

Greg Sterling discusses the new Pew Research report regarding the segregation of internet users.  Greg’s headline is more grabbing than the stats, as it appears that what could be defined as the “Web 2.0″ crowd is 23%, which is more than I would have guessed at this point.  Pew’s own report says about 31% - but their definitions seem to conflict, so I’ll stick with the 23% number.

The greater issue, which comes up from time to time is whether there is an echo chamber that is Web 2.0 and will that continue our break out to widespread adoption and purpose?  No answers hear today, but a word of caution to consider if Web 2.0 is something you alone embrace, or your entire family, including near retirement “Boomers”…..

Ignore my sarcastic view of the PR sweet-spot words in this otherwise notable press release from Adobe.  Flash has made a big comeback with it’s popularity driven by applications in YouTube and other media aggregation sites.

Some of you may say - “Comeback - have you been under a rock or something?  Hasn’t Adobe’s Flash been a critical element of web design, rich media ads, etc for years?”  and to some degree, rightly so.  Here’s the reason for my choice of words “Comeback”:  Flash grew popular in the late 90’s and early 00’s for visually stunning mulitimedia websites.  Then came search engine optimization and search engine marketing best practices, which looked down upon the use of Flash in websites, as search engine spiders could not “read” a Flash file.  So, it’s been out of vogue if you wanted your website to be search engine friendly.

With the advent of YouTube and other media aggregation sites, Flash has become the new poster child for media distribution capabilities.  Now that it has an even newer lease on life on cellphone platforms, it may be here to stay.

So, strategic question - will the use of Flash media files take the place of MP3, MP4, due to the ubiquity of the Flash Player?  Of course, you technology strategy geniuses out there are saying “Ed - I had that figured out 2 years ago - what took you so long?”. 

This would have just a LITTLE impact on the current technology that drives music, film, podcasting and iPods, etc.  If cellphone MFRs implement Flash as their media technology of choice, the ramifications are pretty large…..I’ve already said that cellphones replace the iPod and other MPx players in the end game.  Maybe this accelerates the end game.

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, 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….

Engadget reports today that last night, RIM announced the initial release of the their first truly consumer model, the Blackberry Pearl, or the 8100 in geek speak.  Hoping to snag one of these to demo at a conference at which I’m speaking later this month.  Expect to see in on the shelves or in backorder mode as early as September 12!

This model includes a camera, MP3 and MP4 play capability and other nice things.  That’s why you might see a long line…..

This comes under the heading of “the customers don’t get it yet, so let’s make them pay”.  Reuters has this article which is posted on Yahoo! News this morning regarding Alltel’s launch of a “new” service that allows downloads or streaming of podcasts directly to your cellphone.

While I agree that one has to develop a business model to support the use of new technologies, I’m concerned that the window of success here is about 6 months.  Why not download the podcasts to your computer using a podcast client/reader and transfer the content over to the phone (Smartphone, etc) that will play the media?

Now, to Melodeo’s credit, they’ve built a podcast client that loads on the phones - but are people dying to get their mission critical podcasts to the second on the fly?   In my opinion, we won’t be using this model a year from now.  Just my 2 cents.

Engadget has a write-up here on a Blackberry 8100 which will be consumer-like in its feature set. Cameraphone, audio and video playback capability, etc - due to be out this fall. The site rumors that T-Mobile will be the first carrier selling it - my sources confirm that. T-Mobile has typically been the first to launch the more slim versions of the Blackberry product line, which uses predictive text for typing, instead of a full QWERTY keyboard.

This continues to confirm our opinion that the phone handset will be the media player of choice.

The real plus, with Blackberry coming out with this device, is that BB has had the best battery management of phones compared with other manufacturers. This will enable the media play capability to have some life along with the phone functionality. As a friend of mine said recently - if my iPod runs out of juice, that’s no big deal. But, if because of my media playing on my phone, my phone dies - I’m dead. Business-wise, that is. I assume….

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?

Robert hits a softball thrown by Peter Davis, regarding podcasting as an inefficient medium.  Radio and television are therefore inefficient mediums as well, but somehow, those two industries have managed to survive .

Since Robert is moving to PodTech, he has to provide a good defense, which he does.  As I’ve pointed out here before, portable media players are what makes podcasting go fast.  Portable media consumption is the name of the game, baby.  It’s here to stay.  And longer than Peter Davis believes.

Bruni Giusanni’s Lunch over IP has a post here, discussing the Informa Telecoms & Media research report stating that there are now more cell phones than people in 30 countries.  Bruni discusses the point that some of this is due to personal and corporate phones, as well as businessmen and other travelers using prepaid SIM cards in the countries they’re visiting.

Regardless, this is a stunning number and I imagine we haven’t seen the end of the growth rate on that either.  He lists the countries and some other useful data on total GSM subscribers.