Is Mobile Entertainment the Next Big Thing?

My wife, Jennifer, came home from work one Saturday morning and told me that she and the other two girls on shift with her were watching some movies the previous evening.  She works the overnight shift at a shelter for troubled children, and once the nightly chores are completed, the staff are allowed to watch some TV in between bed checks.  But no one was watching the movies on the common area TV.  No, each of the three women had been watching three different movies, in three different rooms, on three different mobile devices.

While writing this, Jen has pointed out that two of the women where in one room while the third was in another.  But the point is the same; these self-described non-technical people chose to use a laptop, a portable DVD player, and an iPod to watch their mobile content.  I have to wonder, if this conversation had taken place 3 months from now, would one of them be using their new Treo 700p to watch live TV?  How about streaming satellite radio stations?  Or maybe even a good ebook?

What works and what doesn’t

It is my belief that mobile media (ebooks, TV, movies, and radio) are by no means the accepted norm by the general population.  Yet.  I do believe that this trend will change dramatically over the next 3 to 4 years.  By the end of the decade, I expect people to use mini-tablets, PDAs and smartphones as entertainment platforms in addition to communication platforms.

Streaming content, audio and video, is a big first step to increasing the adoption rate of PDAs and smartphones, like the Palm TX and Treo 700p, as the preferred player for the average customer.  Steaming media doesn’t have to be downloaded and stored on a SD card or hard drive.  This means that the space requirements for mobile devices are much lower. Since the content isn’t going to be stored, only streamed, there is no pesky digital rights management (DRM) software to get in the way.  Making the software media players intuitive to use and easy to learn will lower the barrier to use.  This is important to encourage more people to try the software and feel less intimidated by it.  Palm has also started to wise up about how their customers use their devices.  Only a small percentage of Palm’s customers ever add third-party software to their handhelds.  By bundling great software such as On Demand and Pocket Tunes, people will use them.

However, there is still some work to be done.  The music and movie industries are very much concerned about what customers are trying to do with digital content.  In my opinion, the music industry has gone totally nuts.  I point to the damage that Sony caused to their reputation with the rootkit fiasco from a few months ago.  When possible, I now avoid Sony’s products because I feel I can no longer trust them.  Conversely, the movie industry seems to be cautiously embracing new technologies and new ways to distribute content to mobile devices.  Until both the music and movie industries get their acts together and devise workable solutions that allow customers to legally purchase, download, and play content on the devices that customers chose, things will remain a bit dicey.

Bringing it all together

Mobile media is no longer in its infancy; it’s now a toddler.  When companies work together to build solutions that empower their customers, mobile media usage will explode and truly become the next big thing.