NBC Gets Into Cell Phone TV
About once a week a traditional media company announces that its programming will be available in planes, trains, and automobiles. The latest launch is NBC’s (GE) new on-demand shows which will be available through MobiTV, one of the players in…
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About once a week a traditional media company announces that its programming will be available in planes, trains, and automobiles. The latest launch is NBC’s (GE) new on-demand shows which will be available through MobiTV, one of the players in the phone video delivery market. Verizon (VZ) is starting a similar business with Qualcomm (QCOM), and so is everyone else.
Within a year, it is safe to assume that most major wireless companies here, in Europe, and in Asia will offer TV. Some will be live and some on-demand.
But, several surveys have shown that the up-take of these services will be about 10%. For example, The Yankee Group found that only 11% of Europeans were interested in getting video on their phones. Once people were asked to pay a premium, the number dropped further.
So, the market will probably end up being fairly small with dozens of services vying for a few consumers.
NBC, are you watching this?
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
