Hollywood, meet wireless.
It seems the Boob Tube is the latest mobile phone add-on for the world’s wireless industry, a business constantly hunting the next new technology to astound and astonish the average phone shopper. Indeed, U.S. shoppers will get their first taste of a mobile-phone/TV device in the coming weeks as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. plans to release its SGH-p705 flip phone sometime in the fourth quarter.
However, some see the combination of a TV tuner and a mobile phone to be a niche product at best, and one that could potentially irritate those selling the device-wireless carriers.
“It’s a natural extension” to the mobile phone, said Michael King, senior analyst at Gartner Research. “The carriers are a little wary of it, however.”
King said wireless operators may not be terribly enthusiastic to sell such a device because they will receive no revenues from the TV functions. Indeed, because most of the nation’s carriers spend millions of dollars on TV advertisements already, they will in essence be preaching to the choir-at least, to those customers who purchase a mobile-phone/TV device and catch their commercials. King said carriers would rather push a TV service streamed over their own networks, allowing them to collect the resulting data revenues.
Even so, King said, carriers likely will preach to only a small choir. Sales of portable, miniature TVs available in the United States have been sluggish, with only a few million total sales.
“These (mobile-phone/TV) devices will fill a limited niche,” King said, adding, “the cool side is hard to argue with.”
The cool factor indeed seems to be driving the innovation of mobile-phone/TV devices, as several major consumer electronics companies are looking to cash in on the combination. Samsung, which has made a mark at the forefront of wireless novelty, is expected to be the first company to bring a mobile phone/TV to the U.S. market. The company unveiled its SGH-p705 during the Samsung DigitAll event Sept. 16 in New York, along with a range of advanced electronics products. However, Samsung is remaining tight-lipped on which carrier will sell the device and how much it will cost.
Samsung’s SGH-p705 is a tri-band GPRS phone with a built-in NTSC TV tuner. The TV feature includes TV Capture, Auto Program, Display Setting and an Off Timer. It will also allow users to save TV images and send them as multimedia messages. The phone will offer Java applications, a WAP browser, 40 polyphonic ring tones and a dual-color LCD.
But Samsung is not alone. Last week, Sony Corp. jumped into the TV fray with a new video recorder accessory. The product allows owners of its Clie personal digital assistant to record TV shows and then watch them later on their devices. The recorder works by connecting to a TV or cable box via a coaxial cable. The system can record more than four hours of TV on a Memory Stick Pro memory card, a thumbnail-sized storage disk, which can be inserted into the Clie PDA for viewing. Although the service is designed for the Clie, a variety of high-end wireless devices and mobile phones include slots for such memory storage disks.
Separately, Sony in Japan unveiled a new mini digital broadcast tuner module that would allow mobile phones to act as televisions, according to Reuters. The tuner will be the size of a postage stamp and will ship in December.
Sony and Samsung follow NEC Corp. and Sanyo Corp., which both have introduced mobile-phone/TV devices in Asia.
“The market is not clamoring for this kind of stuff,” King said.
The point of such devices, King said, is more to promote a company or brand rather than to generate revenues from millions of sales. Like sports sponsorships or celebrity endorsements, introducing advanced products like a mobile-phone/TV device is a way to convince shoppers that a particular company or brand is ahead of the curve and a good purchase.
“They’re building them because they’re technology showcases,” King said. “It shows a technology leadership, which could lead to a higher opinion of the brand.”
Other mobile-phone combinations include FM/AM radios, MP3 players and video-game consoles.
