EA advisory board member in the press
Tomi Ahonen is featured in two periodicals this week on the topic of mobile-TV convergence. In the American business weekly Barrons, he is quoted at length saying pretty much the same stuff he’s on about here at our blogsite, for example:
Tomi Ahonen predicts people will use their mobiles mainly for “snacking” on favourite TV content at idle moments of the day. The mobile phone will never become an alternative viewing platform, he argues, adding that the real challenge is for operators to create bold new TV services around the unique features of a mobile handset. These features, he says, include the ability to interact with, personalize and pay immediately for TV-related content.
Barrons, 20 March 2006
Unfortunately that issue is not free online, so you have to buy the issue to read more.
But if you want to read more about how to do 3G-TV, with several real examples of mobile-TV services and how the fourth screen differs from Cinema, TV and the PC screen, Tomi’s column in European Communications of Spring 2006, is worth a read. Tomi explains how to use his mobile service creation theory, the Six Ms, to build billable value into mobile TV services. Their Eurocomms website is open to access for all, so we warmly recommend visitors to to hop on over and read Tomi’s full column entitled “3G TV Convergence, the Personal Touch”.
But this is something I picked out that caught my eye
The fourth M is Multi-user, or extending into the community. A good example of a Multi-user mobile TV service is viewer participation in the form of SMS-to-TV chat. Launched in Finland in 2001, over the years it has evolved to SMS-to-TV dating as in Italy, SMS-to-TV games as in Malaysia and SMS-to-TV Rap the latest hit in Finland. But the most advanced concept of premium user-generated content on the mobile phone, broadcast live on TV, comes from Korea, on the Tu Media network. Last Autumn Tu Media introduced videoclip-to-TV chat. Any viewer could send their videoclips as premium-cost MMS messages to the broadcaster, and moments later these would be broadcast live. Your kid having a birthday? Shoot the video and turn on the TV.
To read the full column, please visit European Communications.