Nokia Teams With Spike Lee For Mobile Film Competition

By Chris Fox on April 28th, 2008
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[VIA: MOCONEWS]

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is tying up with director Spike Lee to “direct a short film comprising YouTube-style videos created by teenagers and ad*lts using their mobile phones”, reports the NYT. The site (www.nokiaproductions.com) will let contributors upload material created with their mobile phones include video, music, photos and text, where Lee and his assistant directors will revise them and other site visitors will be able to peruse them and combine them with their own material to make something new. The final film will have three acts, each three to five minutes long, with three winners being incorporated into the acts. Nokia doesn’t have carrier distribution in place yet, but Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is involved—I was automatically signed into the site on my Yahoo ID, although the competition is only available to US residents.

Nokia probably hopes Lee will bring some cachet to both the competition and to its handsets—the overall aim being to encourage the use of handsets to create media. “This is not a marketing gimmick,” said Craig Coffey, Nokia’s vice president for North American marketing and a former PepsiCo executive. “The notion of social networking and entertainment is real.” That may be true, but it’s amusing that during the interview “Mr. Lee corrected himself twice, remembering that he was supposed to call the cellphone a “mobile device”. That’s not part of Nokia’s marketing?

Sony Signs With Nokia

By Chris Fox on April 23rd, 2008
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[VIA ME DAILY]

Sony BMG has formally signed up to Nokia’s ambitious Comes With Music concept.

It’s a major coup for Nokia, which already has Universal on board. Speculation suggests EMI is privately positive about the service too.

Nokia Comes With Music is expected to launch in the second half of 2008 on a range of Nokia devices in selected markets. The concept bundles ‘free’ music into the price of the hardware, so that buyers of selected Nokia devices can download tracks to mobile or PC via Nokia Music Store for 12 months. At the end of the one year period, they can keep their downloaded tracks for good.

Thereafter, they can purchase additional tracks from the Nokia Music Store, or move on to a Nokia “unlimited access” subscription service.

Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business at Sony BMG, said: “We think this business model will encourage users to sample a wide range of material, expand their musical tastes, and listen to more music than ever before. In the process, we think it will provide new opportunities to artists from every genre of music, and increase demand for music overall.”

Major MobiTV Improvements

By Chris Fox on April 18th, 2008
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Likely feeling pressure to innovate as competitors like DVB-H and MediaFLO close the mobile TV gap, MobiTV is prepping a plethora of improvements to its software and back end that should be hitting customers everywhere next month. Perhaps the single biggest improvement will be the system’s capability to multicast programming on the fly based on the real-time popularity of a channel in a given area, rather than unicasting it and requiring significantly more bandwidth be sapped from the data pipe. Speaking of real-time, ads will now be injected on the fly — and they’ll be targeted, too, giving users some semblance of a reason to not change channels or put the phone back in their pocket when their program cuts to commercial break. MobiTV also says that it has somehow managed to cut channel change times down to a second or less — a huge improvement over the existing software — addressing a complaint leveled by many a MobiTV user over the years. Sure, AT&T’s rolling out MediaFLO next month — but if there’s a message in these developments here, it’s that these guys don’t plan on slipping quietly into the night.

[VIA: Engadget Mobile]

Mobile Content Is A Man’s World

By Chris Fox on April 16th, 2008
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[VIA : ME DAILY]

Thirty-six per cent of 18-34 year-old males in Western Europe use mobile content services.

The latest figures from M:Metrics for February also show that nine per cent of the same demographic respond to SMS advertising compared to a four per cent market average.

In general general terms Wester Europe’s male population is more inclined to browse and download content from the mobile web.

A quarter of all male mobile users accessed mobile content during the month, compared to just under 19 per cent of women. This audience is also quite young -  28 per cent of 13- 17 year-olds consume mobile content, compared to only 12 per cent of those aged 55 and older.

M:Metrics says US mobile users are more active consumers of content, as unlike Europeans they use SMS less frequently for news and information retrieval and are more likely to have data plans.

Among Europeans, the UK has the highest percentage of mobile content users at 26.8 per cent, while Germany and France la, at 18.4 per cent and 18.5 per cent, respectively.

Paul Goode, senior analyst at M:Metrics, said: “Reaching the 18- 34 year-old demographic is a real challenge to advertisers, as this group is spending less time consuming print and broadcast media. According to TGI M:Metrics data, in Great Britain, young consumers are redirecting that attention to mobile, as 18 to 34 year olds comprise 56 per cent of mobile media users, compared to only 29 per cent of TV viewers.”

Orange Launches Film Channels

By Chris Fox on April 9th, 2008
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Cinéma Séries to offer exclusive access to new films and series from Warner Bros. International Television and HBO.

The channel will also offer exclusive access to new movies from Fidélité Films and a large selection of films from the Gaumont catalogue. Orange cinéma séries will be available by subscription for all Orange TV, internet and mobile customers in France.

The service consists of six channels of films and TV series, with the content also available on-demand. It will offer exclusive releases of all Warner Bros. films (Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Ocean’s 13, I am Legend, Dark Knight, etc.), as well as new series from HBO (True Blood, Generation Kill, John Adams, In Treatment, etc).

[VIA : ME DAILY] 

Google Tops Mobile Web Brands

By Chris Fox on April 2nd, 2008
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That’s according to the latest data from Nielsen Mobile, which puts MSN second.

Google’s mobile services had 13.4 million unique users in December 2007, followed by MSN with 11.1 uniques and AOL with eight million.

Data released today from Nielsen Mobile also shows that there were 35.6 million unique users of all mobile web services in the US in December, up from 31.9 million in August.

The audience measurement specialist also broke out some stats on mobile advertising, including 57.7 million US mobile users recalling seeing ads in 4Q 2007, equivalent to 23/3 per cent penetration. That’s up from 42.4 million and 17.9 per cent penetration in 2Q 2007.

[VIA : ME Daily]

Paramount Pictures Playing Mobile Games

By Chris Fox on April 1st, 2008
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[VIA: MocoNews]

Paramount Pictures said this year it will be expanding its interactive department to publish video games, focusing in particular on casual, handheld and mobile games, according to a report in Variety. The studio, which created a new global business unit in February, is now saying it will make a multi-million inv*stm*nt to create games, too. Various games will take different paths, whether they are published in house, co-published or licensed to other game developers.

The Viacom (NYSE: VIA) studio will be tapping the expertise of two industry executives: Matt Candler will be VP of interactive development, in charge of developer relations for games the studio is funding and will also help package film properties into games. He comes from Grind Games, Seven Studios, Six Studios and Activision (NSDQ: ATVI). Luke Letizia will be exec director of interactive licensing, watching over projects that are licensed to other publishers. They’ll work with Sandi Isaacs, Paramount’s SVP of interactive and mobile, and Harry Lang, VP of interactive and mobile production.

The article said that Paramount’s move to getting more involved in making the video games, is a trend towards ensuring quality as well as moving faster without having to wait for a publisher to become interested. It said Warner Bros. is the only other studio publishing games. Issacs said: “We are entering into deals now where we will be publishing games this year.”