Digital Hollywood panelists: Mobile TV still in early stages

SANTA MONICA, Calif.-It’s not the cash cow most in the wireless industry hope it will be, but mobile television is already producing some steady revenue streams and showing signs of growth, Levi Shapiro, director of audiences at Telephia, said in opening remarks at a panel here at the Digital Hollywood conference.
“The good news is it’s about a $150 million revenue for (the first quarter of 2007),” he said. “We have 3.6% penetration of mobile video in the United States.”
With more than 8.4 million people paying for mobile video offerings in the past 30 days, the average U.S. mobile video revenue per user is around $7.50, he said.
“Really it’s a craving for entertainment, short-form entertainment,” Shapiro said.
Craig Shapiro, head of content strategy and acquisition at Helio L.L.C., insisted that the mobile virtual network operator is not a media company intent on creating content, marking a striking difference between its approach and that of Amp’d Mobile Inc., which recently filed for bankruptcy protection.
“We want to work with the creative community to procure content,” he said.
Helio’s Shapiro argued that the wireless carriers are cutting mobile video adoption short. “Pricing from other operators here in the United States has held back video tremendously,” he said.
As if to underline the troubles in the mobile video market, a number of panelists had trouble with wired video presentations. Dan Novak, VP of programming and advertising at MediaFLO USA, was noticeably disappointed when a video presentation running through a laptop computer began acting as if it was running through a dial-up Internet connection.
Still, after a laptop restart and a similarly disappointing result, Novak made the best of it.
“That video that you just saw looked like it was going over a carrier’s network, that is not what it (MediaFLO) looks like,” he said. “Until you see it, you can’t describe the experience.”
Novak said AT&T Mobility will be launching the MediaFLO service late this year and that his company is continuing to work on clip- and data-casting services that will broadcast content over the network to be cached on devices. MediaFLO is currently being offered by Verizon Wireless.