Companies – Page 114 – Digital-Lifestyles

3G: Adventures In Compelling Content – Pt 3

3G Networks Still Missing Compelling Content - Pt 3 With a lucrative mobile market hungry for content, it’s not surprising to find a host of companies getting their thinking caps on.

Conker Media, Mersey TV’s digital development and production division, has already created mobile content for teen-tastic TV soap Hollyoaks, but it’s aware of the challenge ahead:

“It’ll be interesting to see whether we can develop something which is effectively stand-alone and which doesn’t have a TV property with it,” said Lee Hardman, head of Conker Media in an interview with Peter Keighron at Broadcastnow.

“If you can crack that it will be seen as a breakthrough.”

Conker’s latest idea is “textual intercourse” (stop tittering at the back) which gives new writers and directors the opportunity to tell a story on slides with 160 characters.

“In a strange way it’s going back to quite traditional storyboarding,” says Hardman. “I think it’s going to require somebody with good storytelling skills – traditional skills – in order to get the audience’s attention five days a week, 52 weeks a year.”

Last year, Nokia introduced its “Nokia Shorts” competition which invited ‘film-makers’ to enter movies created on consumer level digital video cameras.

The shorts had to be no longer than 15 seconds long, with the winning entries being screened at the Raindance festival, a leading British independent film event.

The winning filmmaker was given the opportunity to make a longer film with a professional crew and a training course at Raindance.

3G Networks Still Missing Compelling Content - Pt 3 In addition, the winner and two runner-ups each received filmmaking training courses courtesy of Raindance.

Meanwhile, Channel 4 has commissioned cutting-edge animators Empire Square – creators of the Gorillaz music project – to create a series of 90-second to three-minute clips to work on a mobile platform.

In an interesting reversal, the animations will also be shown on TV channel E4.

Although it’s clear that there’s no lack of enthusiasm from creatives to get involved with the mobile industry, the big problem for the network owners is how to extract some revenue out of the content.

Although ventures like the ‘Nokia Shorts’ competition are great for attracting favourable PR and showcasing the potential of 3G, they’re not going to get the network cash tills ringing.

In the next instalment, we’ll look at the problem of raising revenue streams from mobile content.

Nokia Shorts
Raindance Festival
Conker Media
broadcastnow (reg required)

Yahoo 360 Service Blends Blogging And Social Networking Tools

Yahoo 360 Service Blends Blogging And Social Networking Tools Internet giants Yahoo are preparing to introduce a new service that blends several of the popular features of its site with two of the Web’s fastest growing activities – blogging and social networking.

The hybrid service, snappily entitled “Yahoo 360,” won’t be available until 29 March, but the company decided to announce the product early after details were leaked to news outlets.

The service is designed to enable Yahoo’s 165 million registered users to grab content from Yahoo discussion groups, online photo albums and review section and slap it into their own blogs (web logs).

The service also aims to be big on ‘social networking’, making it easy for users to connect with others who share common interests and friends. Yahoo bloggers (Yahblogoos?!) can either choose to open their blogs to the entire world or restrict access to chums invited through e-mail.

“We heard from people that they have a strong desire to stay close to the people who are important to them, but at the same time they didn’t want to feel like they were exposing themselves online,” said Julie Herendeen, Yahoo’s vice president of network products.

“Yahoo 360 has also been designed to let users consolidate a variety of existing Yahoo services and content in one place, with the goal of increasing users’ interaction” added Paul Brody, the company’s director of community products. “It’s about integrating all the great resources across the Yahoo network into this service to deepen the users’ engagement,” he said.

Similar to Microsoft’s Space and Lycos’ Circles, Yahoo 360 represents Yahoo’s effort to tap into the popularity of blogs and social networking sites.

Although sniffy critics continue to dismiss blogs as the dull mumblings of the self obsessed generation, recent figures reveal that 27 percent of online adults in the United States read them and another 7 percent write them (source: Pew Internet and American Life Project).

Blogging has also started to be recognised as a credible news reporting tool, often publishing stories missed by the mainstream media – the first hand accounts posted on the Web after the Asian tsunami being a notable example.

Of course, the big draw for Yahoo is that social networking sites are establishing themselves as major online attractions, with the prospect of lots of luvverly advertising opportunities.

According to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm, Yahoo notched up 110 million unique visitors last month, accounting for nearly 30 billion page views.

By expanding into social networking and blogging, Yahoo are hoping to make its Web site a more alluring prospect, with the blogs attracting even more visitors to their site.

It has to be said that Yahoo are unfashionably late arrivals to the blogging party, with competitors like MySpace.com Chief Executive Chris DeWolf predicting they’ll have a tough time catching up with entrenched social networking sites.

But Yahoo have some major tricks up their sleeve: millions have already shared their personal information with the company via the registration process and the company has deep, deep pockets, with US$3.5 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2004.

When the service goes online later this month, Yahoo 360 will be initially restricted to users invited by the company. Those early participants will then be able to invite their chums to join in.

Yahoo 360

Lose friends The Apple Mac Way

Lose friends And Disenfranchise People The Apple Mac Way Even the most die-hard Mac hugger is having problems defending the company’s recent litigious spree, where Apple seems determined to become ‘The Man’ and use its corporate power to crush all before it.

We find this action particularly strange given the inevitable rise of competition in the portable digital media space. As we’ve saw at CeBIT, the Chinese and Taiwanese MP3-player producing companies have embraced design to good effect. Apple’s iPod crown for the future is now a lot less certain, and given this we’d have thought this would be a time they would be trying to maintain their current friends and make new ones. Instead they appear hell bent on irritating everyone.

First off, there was the case of the bloggers at Apple Insider, PowerPage and Think Secret, mercilessly pursued though the courts after they leaked snippets of Apple’s future plans to their excited audience of Mac users.

Wielding their big white shiny Apple Mac stick, the company successfully won a judgement from the Santa Clara County Superior Court forcing the bloggers to admit to their sources.

The court also granted Apple powers to root around the blogger’s e-mail records in their near-religious quest to track down the culprit.

A wave of international protests followed the ruling by Judge Kleinberg that the laws covering the divulging of trade secrets “outweighed considerations of public interest” with the Guardian newspaper arguing “Was Enron’s off-balance sheet funding structure a “trade secret”, for instance?”

Business Week was equally unimpressed: “Apple has the right to use the legal system to help it punish those who have misappropriated its trade secrets, or to identify employees or partners who may have broken confidentiality agreements.

Lose friends And Disenfranchise People The Apple Mac Way But going after the Web sites or forcing them to divulge their sources will put the company in the middle of a freedom-of-speech firestorm that will be a costly distraction for management, and could tarnish the Apple brand.”

Not surprisingly, the EFF was also deeply concerned about the ruling:

“We’re disappointed that the trial court ignored the Supreme Court’s requirement that seeking a journalist’s confidential sources be a ‘last resort’ in civil discovery,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Instead, the court asserts a wholesale exception to the journalist’s privilege when the information is alleged to be a trade secret.”

“This is a broad-brush ruling that threatens journalists of all stripes,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn.

Writing in The Scotsman, long time Mac user Stewart Kirkpatrick was equally unchuffed, “In California at least, Apple has destroyed journalism by undermining the most vital tool of our trade: the ability to receive information without having to shop the person who told you.”

Meanwhile, Mac was busy flexing its bully boy corporate muscle in the UK, successfully squashing a smaller company holding prior rights on the iTunes.co.uk domain.

The company registered the name in November 2000 – four years before Apple launched its UK service – with the URL redirecting to their music search engine on CyberBritain.

Apple initiated the complaint because it secretly applied for a UK trademark for the name iTunes on October 27 2000. This application was confidential – known only by Apple, its filing agents and Her Majesty’s Patent Office – and was not published in the TradeMarks Journal until December 6 2000.

After being asked to issue a decision on a complaint through its Dispute Resolution Service, UK domain service registry Nominet has decided that the domain should be handed to Apple.

The owner of iTunes.co.uk, Benjamin Cohen, expressed his frustration. “I must admit that we were not expecting this decision by Nominet’s appointed expert. Apple chose to launch the UK brand of ‘itunes’ within the UK with the knowledge that we had owned the name for three years before their US launch and four years before their launch within the UK,” he said.

“We now face two decisions, whether to appeal to Nominet directly or refer the matter to the High Court. Both of these options are expensive and are not necessarily within the means of a small business. However, the recent High Court victory of Phone4U.co.uk against the major retailer, Phones4U – owned by the Caudwell Group – leads me to think that our case may be extremely strong.”

It’s clear that the Apple self-destruct PR offensive isn’t over yet, with The Register reporting the mysterious case of Google’s vanishing Mac OS X-style interface.

Designed as a tribute to all things Mac, a software engineer had replaced the main text navigation bar on the Google home page with a Mac OS X-style dock sporting a row of eight icons zooming and shrinking as the mouse hovered over them.

The coder was clearly so enamoured with Mac that he included a loving poem above the copyright notice on the Google page: “Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you”. (sickbag please!)

Sadly, it appears that litigious Apple don’t find anything funny these days, and the design promptly vanished off the Web completely with neither Apple nor Google offering any explanation.

It does seems strange that a company that prides itself for ‘thinking differently’ seems to have embarked on a mission to appear as unpleasant, as ruthless and as willing to crush the little fella as its Redmond neighbours.

With a scathing report in The Guardian concluding that Apple is effectively, “asking to be loathed and subverted”, some pundits are wondering why Apple should actively seek to alienate the people who are its fans and customers.

Put simply, such actions don’t make much business sense.

Google’s X Files disappear
Apple is ‘real loser’ in Think Secret battle
How Apple lost its groove
Nominet backs Apple iTunes domain claim
Blogger lawsuit peels Apple’s shine

MP3 Player Sales Set To Nearly Quadruple By 2009

MP3 Player Sales Set To Nearly Quadruple By 2009 Shipments of MP3 players soared by an enormous 116% in 2004, as hundreds of wallet-tempting products arrived in response to the phenomenal success of Apple iPod player, according to a survey by Market Intelligence firm, iSuppli.

Propelled by the soaring growth in demand for hard disk drive (HDD)-based products, iSuppli predicts shipments of MP3 players will nearly quadruple from 2004 to 2009.

The company forecasts that total MP3 player shipments will expand to 132 million units in 2009, rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.1% from 36.8 million in 2004.

Although growth in 2005 is expected to slow from the frenzied buying levels of 2004, the MP3 market will continue to expand at a rapid rate, with iSuppli predicting unit shipments of MP3s rising to 57.7 million in 2005, up 57% from 36.8 million in 2004.

The super, soaraway success of the iPod echoed the public’s love affair with HDD-based MP3 players, with competitors moving quickly to offer products that aped the iPod’s use of a 1.8-inch HDD.

MP3 Player Sales Set To Nearly Quadruple By 2009 The iSuppli report also predicts that HDD-based MP3 player shipments will grow by a CAGR of 41.8% from 2004 to 2009, as compared to 22.9% for flash-based players.

Shipments are expected to 56.2 million units in 2009, up from 9.8 million in 2004, with HDD-based products accounting for nearly half of all MP3 shipments, at 42.6% in 2009 (up from only 26.6% in 2004).

The overall small form-factor HDD market had revenues of US$2.2 billion in 2004 and likely will rise to US$5.7 billion in 2008, generating a CAGR of more than 27 % over this period, iSuppli predicts.

The first vendor to ship 1.8-inch HDDs was Toshiba. Hitachi Global Storage Technology also has started shipping these drives and Western Digital Corp. (WDC) is expected to begin shipping them later in the year.

The research group said electronics producers stood to benefit from consumers’ willingness to pay more for “waaaaaay cool” products, something that Apple traditionally excels at and something that Sony clearly has in mind with its funky new line-up of Walkmans.

“Initially, (Apple’s) iPod was quite expensive, but the company reduced prices when the competition arrived. It also has aggressively introduced many generations of products in quick succession over the past four years,” iSuppli said.

But iSuppli warned companies not to try to squeeze too many features into their products: “The so-called ‘Swiss Army Knife’ approach has not succeeded in the MP3 market. Simple, elegant products that perform a few functions with easy-to-use interfaces have sold well in the marketplace, while the do-everything approach has failed.”

So, there goes my idea for a MP3 playing toaster then.

iSuppli

TiVo Software For Comcast In Strategic Partnership

Comcast and TiVo join in Strategic Partnership TiVo has signed a multiyear deal to make a version of its personal video recorder software available to customers of Comcast Cable, currently the King Kong of largest cable operators in the US.

The deal is the first of the partnerships the struggling pioneer hopes to forge with cable operators and will result in Comcast and TiVo working together in peace and harmony to develop a version of the TiVo service to be made available on Comcast’s current DVR platform.

The new service will be marketed with the TiVo brand, and is expected to be slipping out on Comcast’s DVR products in a majority of Comcast markets in mid-to-late 2006.

This long-term, non-exclusive partnership will provide Comcast customers with the opportunity to choose the TiVo service with features like Season Pass and WishList, available as an additional option.

If all goes to plan, the service will showcase TiVo’s home networking, multimedia, and broadband capabilities.

“We are focused on providing our customers with a 21st Century television experience,” said Brian Roberts, the chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation. “TiVo has revolutionized the way consumers watch and access home entertainment. By partnering with TiVo, we are continuing to deliver technology that enables our customers to watch what they want when they want on TV. This agreement also reflects our commitment to work with leading technology providers to offer customers more value and choice in their home entertainment experience. Customers love the ease and convenience of our current DVR service, and we look forward to working with TiVo to enhance that service and offer customers the best-in-class DVR experience.”

Steve Burke, the president of Comcast Cable and COO of Comcast, added, “The strong TiVo brand, the clear track record of customer loyalty it has and its cutting-edge features make this a terrific partnership and exciting new product for Comcast.”

Tom Rogers, the vice chairman of TiVo, noted, “It is very important that TiVo has found a way to work with the nation’s largest cable operator on a cooperative basis to develop a state-of-the-art TiVo service, fully integrated with a cable set-top box, that will make TiVo available to millions of cable viewers. … This is a real milestone for TiVo and for the cable industry, but most importantly it is a milestone for television viewers.”

Analysts are hailing the agreement as a lifeline for the Californian-based company, whose shares jumped 75 percent, or US$2.87 (e2.14/£1.50), to close at US$6.70 (e5/£3.50) in Tuesday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Although TiVo currently boasts more than 3 million subscribers it has struggled to find a business strategy that would increase its subscriber base and withstand gnawing competition from generic DVRs offered directly by big cable companies.

In the quarter that ended Jan. 31, TiVo lost a thumping great $33.7 million, substantially heftier than the $12.4 million loss in the same period a year earlier.

Comcast and TiVo join in Strategic Partnership The Comcast deal means that TiVo will have to adapt its software to work on Comcast’s existing DVR platform. This will enable TiVo to blast out the advertising it sells as interactive video clips in their onscreen menu to Comcast subscribers.

Comcast will continue to market its own DVR, with new customers getting a dual-tuner DVR, letting viewers record two shows at once and high-definition television; TiVo offers such features only to DirecTV satellite customers.

Comcast subscribers who plump for the TiVo service will get funky features such as “Suggestions,” which recommends shows based on past viewing habits, and the ability to schedule recordings over the Internet.

The agreement gives TiVo access to Comcast’s 21.5 million cable customers, including 8.6 million digital cable customers who can take advantage of DVRs

TiVo
Comcast

Apple To Join Blu-ray – CeBIT 05

Apple To Join Blu-ray In a board meeting yesterday, Apple computers committed to join the Blu-ray Association and will occupy a seat on the main board.

In the battle of Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD disc formats, this is pretty big news. Although in the current percentage of computers sold, this isn’t a massive surprise, with Apple keen on pushing themselves (successfully) as a media company, this will have a significant impact on the success of the Blu-ray disc format.

Importantly Apple joinging will generate lots of news discussion about Blu-ray. On that note … did you know that pre-recorded Blu-ray discs were see through? Me neither, until I got my hands on one at the Sony press launch (see image at top of story).

Currently Dell and HP are the other two computer companies that sit on the board. Apple will be the 16th company to join the board, joining the 110 companies that have committed to Blu-ray.

Steve Jobs said “Apple is pleased to join Blue-ray Association board as part of our effort to drive consumer adoption of HD.” In return Apple will include the same HD video CoDec that Blu-ray uses in QuickTime 7.

There’s big money and effort being put behind the success of Blu-ray, and with a lot of content companies, CE companies and, computer companies getting behind it, it appears to be pulling ahead.

Apple To Join Blu-ray Blu-ray has been shipping in Japan now for quite some time. Sony’s BDZ-S77 (catchy name) was the first product to ship, and has been followed by other companies, some of which support the dual-layer 50Gb version.

During CeBIT, Philips and Sony have announced computer drives capable of burning Blu-ray disks, or “BD” as those in the know call it. The first Blu-ray consumer device to hit the market in US and European market will be the Sony Playstation 3.

Why does anyone need it? The quick and simple answer is HD TV. Because of the resolution of an HD picture, considerable amounts of storage are required. By 2008 12% of European homes will have HD-capable TV, and more importantly, at the same time, 3m homes to have HDTV service. Clearly HD is already big in Japan and in growing the US.

Blu-ray disc carry 25Gb per layer. There are two layers currently in market, single and dual layer. Others multi-layers discs are being brought to market and we understand that Sony has an eight layer, 200Gb disc running in the Lab.

Blu-ray

Vodafone At Home Talk and Web Announced – CeBIT 05

Vodafone-At-Home-Talk-and-Web-front (Hannover, Germany) Since November, Vodafone has been offering Vodafone At Home Talk in Germany. When using the service, calls that are made from the subscriber’s home cell are charged at a low cost, with one of the bundles available being 1,000 mins for €20 month.

Today at CeBIT Vodafone announced adding to this to include Vodafone At Home Web. By plugging in a Vodafone Connect Card into their computer, subscribers can connect over 3G (UMTS) at 384kbs for a fixed €34 month (£23/US$45>. In return you get up to 60 hours/ 5Gb of access.

In Q2 2005 they will be expanding this to Vodafone At Home Talk and Web. The subscriber will plug all of their current equipment (landline handset, DECT phone, computer, fax, etc) into the box (price being floated, €500/£348/US$671). This box will connect via GSM and UMTS (3G) to the Vodafone network to enable voice and data comms.

In the UK BT Bluephone is designed to provide a similar service for phone calls.

We’re seeing this for the personal and professional nomad. The tech savy who land in an area for a period of time, then move on – eg consultants, or criminals on the run (please don’t confuse the two). It will also be of use in areas where broadband service don’t extend out (eg rural areas), but 3G networks coverage is possible – how ever limited this may be.

This could also be seen as a defensive move. Voice over WiFi is coming to the masses, from big, well known companies (witness AOL and Wannado) and deals like Skype did with Broadreach for free WiFi hotspot usage are going to start to hit the mobile companies hard.

Vodafone-Germany-Bosses During the press conference I asked what they were doing to counter the threat of Voice over WiFi, in particular free service like Skype. Friedrich P Joussen (COO) said they were very aware of the threat and felt it was down to the speed that services could be rolled out to the public.

He referred to a lot of VoIP services (Vonage, etc) charging fixed-rate/catch-all monthly prices, to account for when call traffic leaves the IP network to interconnect with PSTN and charges are levied against them by the PSTN operators. Vodafone’s first move against this is by offering a 1,000 minute service for €20/month detailed above.

This doesn’t, of course, begin to address the competition that a zero-cost/month service like Skype offers.

Vodafone Germany

Apple Shares Fall As Sony And Napster Bite

Apple Shares Fall As Sony And Napster Bite Apple Computer shares dropped Tuesday as Sony relaunched its famous Walkman line amongst concerns that increased competition from Napster might impact its dominance of online music and portable players.

The soaraway success of the iPod music player has transformed Apple’s balance sheet and its stock price, with the company shining as one of the best performers in the Nasdaq technology index over the past year.

But some industry pundits are predicting that Apple is being damaged by serious competition from a new generation of smaller, sleeker and cheaper MP3 players from the likes of Sony, Rio and Creative and a host of online music services led by Napster.

Shares of Apple have dropped 8.5 percent since the announcement of the stock split on 11 February, and have fallen some 6 percent this week alone.

“Competition concerns are certainly going to influence how this stock trades,” said Warren West, principal at Philadelphia-based GreenTree Brokerage Services, which executes trades for institutional investors such as asset managers and hedge funds. “Investors in general have enjoyed the stock moves, there’s a lot of money that has been made, and people are going to start taking profits _ especially after the split.”

Apple Shares Fall As Sony And Napster Bite Over the last twelve months, Apple’s share price has gone from US$23 (€17/£12) to an all-time high of US$81.99 (€61/£42) just before the split was announced.

Investors must now decide if the company’s share price can maintain its strength in the face of a market getting becoming increasingly crowded with rival products.

Sony are aggressively targeting the iPod with their Walkman line of digital music players, hoping to woo customers with lightweight and compact flash memory players instead of bulkier, hard drive-based units.

In fact, many of the new iPod alternatives aren’t trying to compete with Apple’s player at the high end but are focussing on consumers who are choosing between cheaper, lower-storage-capacity flash-media players and pricier, entry-level hard-drive players that hold more than 1,000 songs.

The Sony flash-media players will be knocked out for as low as US$130 (€97/£68) – not as cheap as the new iPod Shuffle, but considered to be better value because of a longer battery life and more features.

“Flash is going to be here for a while, because it’s more affordable,” Kelly Davis, product manager for Sony Electronics, says. “People are trying to get more capacity for their dollar.

The new Sony players are expected to give the company the No. 2 position in the portable music player market by next year.

Apple’s iTunes service is also coming under attack, with rival Napster recently boosting its sales outlook with growing demand for its new “Napster To Go” subscription service, expected to generate US$15 million for its fiscal fourth quarter.

Apple is also experiencing competition from music services offered by rivals such as Microsoft Corp., Real Networks, and Yahoo.

The company still remains in good shape though, with Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicting continuing good sales for the iPod line.

“Our checks have left us more confident that demand for Apple’s key products most notably iMac, Powerbook, Mac mini and various versions of the iPod continue to be ahead of expectations,” Munster told clients in a research report. “We anticipate that strong demand across various segments of the company will allow Apple to exceed Wall Street estimates for overall revenue and earnings.”

Munster expects the company to report earnings of US$1.04 (€0.77 /£0.53) per share on revenue of US$12.81 billion in 2005, up from previous expectations of a 98% share profit on sales of US$12.25 billion.

Piper Jaffray told clients it expects Apple to sell 3.8 million iPods during the second quarter, including 1 million iPod shuffle models, followed by 4.6 million iPods during the third quarter, with the Shuffle model accounting for 1.8 million of the sales.

Apple Shares Fall on Sony, Napster Fears (PA)
Sony MP3 players
Apple iPod

DSC-T7: Sony Announces sexy 5.1mpx Camera – CeBIT 05

Sony DSC T7 (CeBIT, Hannover) Wandering around the Sony products at the pre-CeBIT press conference, I came across the DSC-T7, the smallest, sexiest model whos roots lay with the DSC-T1.

Available in the to-be-expected silver and a sultry black, the DSC-T7 re-introduces Sony DSC T7 a sliding cover that both covers and protects the lens and switches the camera on. Measuring only 14.8 mm / 0.6 in at the lens cover, and 9.8 mm / 0.4in for the main body, it packs 5.1m pixel. The back is taken up with a 2.5″ TFT Hybrid LCD, displaying 230,000 pixels.

As you can see from the shots, this baby is really slim and an instant object of desire. Sony think it will sell well to the female side of society and I wouldn’t be so exclusive – men will want this baby too, but we’d advise against popping it in your back pocket and sitting down. Sony DSC T7

Sony DSC T7 Nothing definite on release dates or price but the talk in the corridors is it should be around in May for around 375Euro, $500, 260 UKP.

DSC-T7 Specs: DP Review
DSC-T7 Specs: Sony Press Release

DVB-H: Mobile TV Pilot Begins In Finland

Nokia Begins Mobile TV Pilot Begins In Finland Finnish telecommunications equipment giant Nokia has announced a mobile television pilot, bringing live television broadcasts to mobile devices, starting in Finland today.

The pilot is a result of a collaboration between Digita, Elisa, MTV, Nelonen, Nokia, Sonera, YLE (The Finnish Broadcasting Company) and Nokia.

The project tests mobile TV services and consumer experiences, as well as the underlying technology, with 500 users taking part in the trials around the Helsinki capital region.

This trial follows on from a smaller test in Finland in late 2004, where Nokia learned that people liked watching mobile TV just about everywhere – on the move, in work, in pubs/cafes and at home – with news, weather, sports, entertainment and drama and comedy series proving popular.

This new trial employs a selection of Sonera and Elisa mobile phone customers, using specially equipped Nokia 7710 smartphones capable of receiving mobile TV and radio broadcasts.

The Nokia smartphone also enables direct links to the Internet for access to background information on TV programs or sports results, with access to a host of channels including MTV, YLE and Nelonen, CNN, BBC World, Euronews, Eurosport, ViVa Plus and Fashion TV.

Putting together this service has involved the cooperation of several companies, with Elisa and Sonera being responsible for customer service, invoicing and connections to the new interactive supplementary services.

Digita – who designed and built the digital TV network needed for the distribution of mobile TV services – will be responsible for managing the network, while Nokia will develop the mobile TV service management and smartphones that can receive mobile TV broadcasts.

Nokia Begins Mobile TV Pilot Begins In Finland The mobile TV test uses IP Datacasting (IPDC), which conforms with the DVB-H standard.

At the end of 2004, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) adopted DVB-H as the standard for European mobile television services, enabling the simultaneous transmission of several television, radio and video channels to mobile devices.

The pilot continues until 20 June 2005. We’re already salivating at the prospect of being able to sit in the pub and get all-interactive with the football action!

Nokia