Mobile TV App
In preparation to the coming appjam at IP&TV we asked Olga Steidl Head of Marketing at SPB Software to give us a quick heads-up on the state mobile TV today and her perspective on TV apps. If you do not not about SPB, here are a couple of cool facts:
SPB is not a techy or arcane acronym but stands for Saint Petersburg
SPB has a long list of top downloaded apps from their UI shell to the their mobile TV, across all platforms.
SPB is well known for it mobile TV app... What are the typical use cases of TV on mobile?
Good question. We ran a small survey in January on how people use mobile TV. Out of those currently using mobile TV and video services, the most popular places for watching content are divided between home (52%), in-between activities (18%), whilst in transit (10%), work (8%), school (2%) and other. However, United States viewers tend to differ significantly with over 45 percent preferring transportation or in-between activities to watch mobile TV. From SPB TV experience we know that the most typical example is a person, who is about to go to sleep, but takes some time to watch mobile TV, while lying in a bed.
Do you see a lot of demand for being able to "switch " between TV and mobile to watch a video? Yes we definitely do. Mobile TV technology is more personal than a big screen and more flexible to use. Right now market has everything to make it happen: hardware, great software solutions, content owners, who are ready to go mobile, marketing and advertising tools.
Are there any other use cases to the phone as a "companion" device to the TV and vice versa? Users tend to share video-on-demand services between 3 types of devices: smartphones, tablets and bigger screens. It's very important nowadays to provide user with the same experience among all platforms and form factors. SPB also does set-top box applications, did you see a big uptake in demand for such applications in the past few months? As I mentioned before it's all about consistency. User should get the same experience and application environment in spite of the size of the hardware. But clients for set-up box technologies will be mobile operators and OEMs, not end-users.
Does any specific platform dominate the demand or is it still very fragmented?
In mobile TV Symbian today is by far the leader in terms of sessions. Then iPhone and Android. But it more depends on a device itself. Two factors will accelerate IPTV growth. First of all for Android platform we see a lot of tablets and big screen devices coming. Secondly, majority of mobile operators wake up from "WAP TV" era and consider IPTV projects with more advance Uis and features.
Are there many differences in coding for mobile and coding for TV?
Coding might be not (depends on a platform), but user experience and behavior are.
I seem to see a lot of TV applications which are nothing but gateways to access online video and content through a nice UI. Is this also your feeling?
Look at big TVs:) It's a big gateway to access content. Same on mobile. Right UI is very critical for mobile TV. Newly adopters such as online content owners, also channels like France 24 and Euronews prove every day that the future is about mobile. What differentiates mobile TV market right now from big screen is the lack of big companies and channels. But they will come as well.
What other type of applications do you think will have a future on the TV?
I truly believe that soon people won't know the difference between big computer displays and Tvs. TV function will be just one of the options on a desktop computer. And software will be the same. Everything that looks good on big screens like games, video-on-demand services, browsers will be future of Tvs.
Thanks a lot!