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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

What difference will the Amazon and LOVEFiLM deal make to the mobile industry?

Mark Bridge writes:

If you’ve read any of the tech press today you’ll have seen that Amazon.com is buying LOVEFiLM. Yes, that really is how the company writes its name. Amazon already had quite a collection of LOVEFiLM shares, so it’s really just buying the remainder.

LOVEFiLM, in case you’ve missed the TV ads and online promotions, does DVD rental by post and also streams video over the internet. Oh, and it does games rental as well.

Needless to say, both companies have issued statements saying how great it is for them and their customers. “We look forward to a productive and innovative future”. “We can significantly enhance our members’ experience across Europe”.

But what does all this mean to the mobile industry?

Well, Pocket-Lint.com has interviewed LOVEFiLM CEO Simon Calver and Amazon VP of EU retail Greg Greeley in an article headlined “Lovefilm and Amazon to bring movies to your phone”. Although neither man explicitly says they’re planning this, it certainly seems an obvious next move for the online side of the business.

In fact, if you’ve been following the LOVEFiLM Twitter feed, you’ll know that just yesterday the company Tweeted “We have a number of exciting developments underway for mobile devices in 2011, more news available soon” in reply to a question.

However, the idea of streamed movies on smartphones – as opposed to downloads – raises the usual questions about data. LOVEFiLM (the novelty of that lower case i is starting to wear thin!) says an average video stream over your home broadband will transfer approximately 500MB of data for a 90 minute film. That’s your entire T-Mobile ‘fair usage’ allowance for a month.

Is that realistic for mobile devices?  Well, US-based video streaming service Netflix – arguably one of the reasons Amazon decided to snap up LOVEFiLM – has an iPhone and iPad application. A quick look at various online figures suggests the ‘500MB per film’ figure sits somewhere towards the higher end of individual mobile experiences.

It’s possible to adjust video quality (and therefore data usage) based on connection speed and type, so the cost of video streaming needn’t be quite as scary as it first seems.

Yet without higher or truly unlimited mobile data allowances, it’ll still be a luxury to download full-length movies to mobile phones.

Will the Amazon and LOVEFiLM deal affect the mobile industry?  Almost definitely, I’d say. Will it make a big difference?  It’s much harder to answer that one.

With current tariffs, I’d say no. But just imagine a colour-screen Kindle with the same kind of inclusive mobile data deal available on the company’s current eBook reader. Watch out, iPad – the LOVEFiLM tablet could be on the way!

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Opinion Articles

Last week at The Fonecast: 28th November 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

The really big news last week wasn’t good: 17,000 jobs worldwide are being lost at Nokia Siemens Networks (which, incidentally, is a separate company from both Nokia and Siemens). That’s not far short of a quarter of the total workforce. The company is going to focus on mobile network infrastructure and services, with a particular emphasis on mobile broadband, and is likely to sell off other parts of the business.

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Shared data tariffs, bill shock, net neutrality and mobile traffic management

Mark Bridge writes:

Today’s mobile phone customers want more and more mobile data, which is stretching network capacity. In addition, many of those consumers would rather not be committed to a limit; they’d rather have a mobile internet tariff that is (or appears to be) unlimited. This puts even more pressure on mobile networks.

Author: The Fonecast
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Last week at The Fonecast: 21st November 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

Having read some of last week’s headlines, you might think the UK’s Communication Ombudsman has told mobile phone networks not to describe their data tariffs as ‘unlimited’ unless they really are. However, what’s actually happened is that one of the UK’s communication ombudsmen (ombudspeople?) has asked mobile operators to be clear about any limits, to stop unexpectedly high bills from building up and to tell customers before they exceed any limit. Better than nothing but hardly earth-shattering.

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Top 5 Productivity Apps for Business Owners

Ruben Corbo writes:

As a business owner, you know that being out of the office can cost you customers and productivity. However, in this digital age being out of the office doesn’t mean that you have to be away from your business. By downloading apps specifically for business, you can be productive from anywhere. Here are my top 5 apps for mobile business productivity.

Author: The Fonecast
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Enterprise user, you are the weakest link...

Mark Bridge writes:

Any security process is only as strong as the weakest link. That’s something of a truism. And for many organisations, the weak link is most likely to occur when information leaves the office. Which means it’s often caused by the user’s mobile phone or the user themselves.

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