Posts Tagged ‘Colin Gibbs’

RCR Wireless News columnist Colin Gibbs has an interesting take on the whole mobile TV phenomenon, which basically consists of the mantra, “[Insert Next Year Here] is the year of Mobile TV, I swear” repeated by nearly everyone in the industry, while the rest of the country twiddles its thumbs and maybe sends another text message.

“Mobile TV has a lot of things going for it: a ton of hype, an eye-catching wow factor and, in one case, an $800 million dedicated network,” Gibbs writes. “But it doesn’t have viewers. And that isn’t going to change anytime soon… U.S. adoption of wireless TV is languishing around 1%, according to a study released last week by JupiterResearch, and interest in the stuff has halved—halved!—among consumers in the last two years as the novelty wears thin.”

There’s a gazillion reasons for this—limited mobile content, high prices, crappy network coverage, few supported handsets, and so on. What Gibbs suggests is that the entire mobile TV industry needs to move toward an on-demand TV model, in the vein of Hulu, Netflix Watch Now, and independent Internet-based TV channels; it’s a compelling argument.

RCR Wireless News columnist Colin Gibbs writes that even though most of the tech industry snorted at the introduction of SlotMusic, SanDisk’s Hail Mary pass for a new physical distribution format, older folks who grew up on records and CDs may well take to the idea. Plus, the retail chain link may be its best asset.

“SlotMusic’s most attractive feature may be its most archaic: the way it’s distributed,” Gibbs said. “Cards will be sold at brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, allowing users to pick up a card or two at the same time they buy a new phone. And retail staffers can walk them through SlotMusic, eliminating the confusion and ignorance that seem to plague most mobile full-track services.”

We actually think the idea doesn’t suck—it’s just that in a digital world, the whole point is to not have to carry around a bunch of cards. MicroSD cards are great in and of themselves. But they’re great because they hold thousands of songs, not 10 or 12 songs. If you buy albums like this, you’ll end up with 50 or 100 little cards that you have to carry around. And once you get familiar enough with your PC to move all the songs onto one card, you’ll have defeated the purpose of buying music like this in the first place.