Friday, October 20, 2006

Mobile Phone Services to Fight WiFi

Verizon is turning to humor to bolster its VCast service, but once WiFi is ubiquitous, it may be a tougher sell. The subscription service ($3 per day or $15 for the month) will offer sketch comedy being developed by JibJab, which is organizing a contest promoting up and coming comedy groups.

Selling entertainment services isn't easy with the limitation of bandwidth and small screens of mobile phones (hurry up 3G networks) and it is only going to get tougher. If Apple introduces a WiFi iPod, the company could steal the market for wireless video clips and music video distribution.

Also, as more cities develope comprehensive WiFi coverage and wireless start hitting autos, it will be hard to find a place where you can't download content to a laptop or handheld for far less than the cost of a mobile phone service. If you can get wireless access to video everywhere, why pay through the nose?

And the expectation of mobile entertainment demand may be overblown anyway. ESPN's mobile service crashed and burned in a year, and sports fan are among the demanding for wanting immediate access to information.

Posted By Matt O'Hern at 12:01 PM
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