News from the BBC that normal viewing figures for mobile phone based streaming video was as few as 580 uniques a day is not surprising based on my own experience and the news coming through from many sources over the last year. What is distressing though is the degree of investment to provide that service, which is likely to be more than sending DVDs of the watched source to the individual viewers, although that would have a time lag.
Regardless of my own thoughts about how (not) popular this sort of service is long term, I do have a comparison situation. Back around the turn of the millenium, an organisation I was involved in spent an awful lot of money to provide streaming video of the Superbowl. When the costs were calculated per viewer, it was found that it would have been cheaper to send every viewer all expenses paid to the event, give them the best seats in the place, nice hotel and other entertainment. That was almost 8 years ago. Now live video delivery is more normal but the profits are not generally there, but NBC are hoping there is considering the amounts they have spent on the Olympics rights.
Online video for the home has challenges that are being overcome, but it has taken a very long time. Why do I draw attention to this? Because even if mobile video followed the same trajectory, we are 8 years from even moderate success, something I do not believe though because of the different viewer use case for mobile devices.
Maybe this is a contributing factor as to why Toshiba is dropping out of the market altogether, even in the mobile media prioritised Japan? What do you think?
