Mobile content
Encyclopedia
Mobile content is any type of media which is viewed or used on mobile phone
s, like ringtones, graphics, discount offers, games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid 1990s, the significance of the devices in everyday life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make calendar appointments, send and receive text messages (SMS
), listen to music, watch videos, shoot videos, redeem coupons for purchases, view office documents, get driving instructions on a map, and so forth. The use of mobile content has grown accordingly.
Modern mobile phones can take photographs with a few million pixels. The Nokia N93
can create videos of comparable resolution to a DVD, storing up to 90 minutes on the phone memory.
Mobile content can also refer to text or multimedia hosted on website
s, which may either be standard internet pages, or else specific mobile pages
.
is still the main technology for communication used to send mobile consumers messages, especially simple content such as ringtones and wallpapers. Because SMS is the main messaging technology used by young people, it is still the most effective way of reaching this target market. SMS is also ubiquitous, reaching a wider audience than any other technology available in the mobile space (MMS, bluetooth, mobile e-mail or WAP). More important than anything else, SMS is extremely easy to use, what makes adoption increase day by day.
Although many say that SMS is an old technology that sooner or later will be replaced by fancier like MMS or WAP, the fact is that SMS reinvents itself continuously. One example is the introduction of applications where mobile tickets are sent to consumers via SMS, which contains a WAP-Push that contains a link where a barcode is placed. This clearly substitutes MMS, which has a limited reach and still suffers from interoperability problems.
It is important to keep enhancing the consumer confidence in using SMS for mobile content applications. This means, if a consumer has ordered a new wallpaper or ringtone, this has to work properly, in a speedy and reliable way. Therefore it is important to choose the right SMS gateway provider in order to ensure quality-of-service along the whole path of the content SMS until reaching the consumer's mobile.
Modern phones come with Bluetooth
. This allows video to be sent from phone to phone over Bluetooth, which has the advantages that there is no data charge.
, also known as mobile apps, has become a significant mobile content market since the release of the first iPhone from Apple in 2007. Prior to the release of Apple's phone product, the market for mobile applications (outside of games) had been quite limited. The bundling of the iPhone with an app store, as well as the iPhone's unique design and user interface, helped bring a large surge in mobile application use. It also enabled additional competition from other players. For example, Google's Android platform for mobile content has further increased the amount of app content available to mobile phone subscribers.
Some examples of mobile apps would be applications to manage travel schedules, buy movie tickets, preview video content, manage RSS news feeds, read digital version of popular newspapers, identify music, look at star constellations, view Wikipedia
and much more.
s are applications that allow people to play a game on a mobile handset. The main categories of mobile games include Puzzle/Strategy, Retro/Arcade, Action/Adventure, Card/Casino, Trivia/Word, Sports/Racing, given in approximate order of their popularity.
Several studies have shown that the majority of mobile games are bought and played by women. Sixty-five percent of mobile game revenue is driven by female wireless subscribers. They are the biggest driver of revenue for the Puzzle/Strategy category; comprising 72 percent of the total share of revenue, while men made up 28 percent (see Table 2). Women dominate revenue generation for all mobile game categories, with the exception of Action/Adventure mobile games, in which men drive 60 percent of the revenue for that category. It's also said that teens are three times as likely as those over twenty to play cell phone games.
blocks non Telus website downloads.
is any audio file that is played on a mobile phone. Mobile music is normally formatted as an AAC (Advanced Audio Coding
) file or an MP3
, and comes in several different formats. Monophonic ringtones were the earliest form of ringtone, and played one tone at a time. This was improved upon with polyphonic ringtones, which played several tones at the same time so a more convincing melody could be created. The next step was to play clips of actual songs, which were dubbed Realtones. These are preferred by record labels as this evolution of the ringtone has allowed them to gain a cut of lucurative ringtone market. In short Realtones generate royalties for record labels (the master recording owners) as well as publishers (the writers), however, when Monophonic or Polyphonic ringtones are sold only publishing or "mechanical" royalties are incurred as no master recording has been exploited. Some companies promote covertones, which are ringtones that are recorded by cover bands to sound like a famous song. Recently Ringback tones have become available, which are played to the person calling the owner of the ringback tone. Voicetones are ringtones that play someone talking or shouting rather than music, and there are various of ringtones of natural and everyday sounds. Realtones are the most popular form of ringtones. As an example, they captures 76.4% of the US ringtone market in the second quarter of 2006, followed by monophonic and polyphonic ringtones at 12% and ringback tones and 11.5% – but monophonic and polyphonic ringtones are falling in popularity while ringback tones are growing. This trend is common around the globe. A recent innovation is the singtone, whereby "the user’s voice is recorded singing to a popular music track and then “tuned-up” automatically to sound good. This can then be downloaded as a ringtone or sent to another user’s mobile phone" said the director of Synchro Arts, the developers.
As well as mobile music there are full track downloads, which are an entire song encoded to play on a mobile phone. These can be purchased and bought over the mobile network, but data charges can make this prohibitive. The other way to get a song onto a mobile phone is by "side loading" it, which normally involves downloading the song onto a computer and then transferring it to the mobile phone via Bluetooth, infra-red or cable connections. It is possible to use a full track as a ringtone.
Mobile music is becoming an integral part of the music industry as a whole. In 2005 the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said it expects mobile music to generate more revenues that online music before the end of that year. In the first half of 2005 the digital music market grew enough to offset the fall in the traditional music market – without including the sale of ringtones, which still makes up the majority of mobile music sales around the globe.
, MPEG-4
, RTSP and Flash Lite
.
and Mr Paparazzi Show which both were created for mobile viewing.
There is also mobile broadcast TV, which operates like a traditional television station and broadcasts the content over a different spectrum. This frees up the mobile network to handle calls and other data usage, and because of the "one-to-many
" nature of mobile broadcast TV the video quality is a lot better than that streamed over the mobile networks, which is a "one-to-one" system.
The problem is that broadcast technologies don't have a natural uplink, so for users to interact with the TV stream the service has to be closely integrated to the carriers mobile network. The main technologies for broadcast TV are DVB-H
, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting
(DMB) and MediaFLO
.
. The uploaded video can be shared to your friends through Emails or Social Networking sites. Most Live video streaming application works over the cell network or through Wi-Fi
. They also require most users to have a dataplan from their cell phone carriers.
ese, followed closely by the Europe
ans, are heavy users of their mobile phones and have been attaining custom mobile content for their devices for years. In fact, mobile phone use has begun to exceed the use of PCs in some countries. In the United States
and Canada
, mobile phone use and the accompanying use of mobile content has been slower to gain traction because of political issues and open networks do not exist in America.
On current trends, mobile phone content will play an increasing role in the lives of millions across the globe in the years ahead, as users will depend on their mobile phones to keep in touch not only with their friends but with world news, sports scores, the latest movies and music, and more.
Mobile content is usually downloaded through WAP sites, but new methods are on the rise. In Italy, 800,000 people are registered users to Passa Parola, an application that allows users to browse a big database for mobile content and directly download it to their handsets. This tool can also be used to recommend content to others, or send content as a gift.
An increasing number of people are also beginning to use applications like Qik to upload and share their videos from their cell phone to the internet. Mobile phone software like Qik allows user to share their videos to their friends through emails, SMS
and even social networking sites like Twitter
and Facebook
.
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s, like ringtones, graphics, discount offers, games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid 1990s, the significance of the devices in everyday life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make calendar appointments, send and receive text messages (SMS
Short message service
Short Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...
), listen to music, watch videos, shoot videos, redeem coupons for purchases, view office documents, get driving instructions on a map, and so forth. The use of mobile content has grown accordingly.
Modern mobile phones can take photographs with a few million pixels. The Nokia N93
Nokia N93
The Nokia N93 is a smartphone by Nokia especially designed for multimedia use. It was introduced in April 2006 and released in July 2006.The N93 has improved camera capabilities compared with the earlier N90. The phone has a 3.2 megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss optics and 3x optical zoom as well as a...
can create videos of comparable resolution to a DVD, storing up to 90 minutes on the phone memory.
Mobile content can also refer to text or multimedia hosted on website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
s, which may either be standard internet pages, or else specific mobile pages
Mobile Web
The Mobile Web refers to the use of Internet-connected applications, or browser-based access to the Internet from a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet computer, connected to a wireless network....
.
Transmission
Mobile content via SMSSMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
is still the main technology for communication used to send mobile consumers messages, especially simple content such as ringtones and wallpapers. Because SMS is the main messaging technology used by young people, it is still the most effective way of reaching this target market. SMS is also ubiquitous, reaching a wider audience than any other technology available in the mobile space (MMS, bluetooth, mobile e-mail or WAP). More important than anything else, SMS is extremely easy to use, what makes adoption increase day by day.
Although many say that SMS is an old technology that sooner or later will be replaced by fancier like MMS or WAP, the fact is that SMS reinvents itself continuously. One example is the introduction of applications where mobile tickets are sent to consumers via SMS, which contains a WAP-Push that contains a link where a barcode is placed. This clearly substitutes MMS, which has a limited reach and still suffers from interoperability problems.
It is important to keep enhancing the consumer confidence in using SMS for mobile content applications. This means, if a consumer has ordered a new wallpaper or ringtone, this has to work properly, in a speedy and reliable way. Therefore it is important to choose the right SMS gateway provider in order to ensure quality-of-service along the whole path of the content SMS until reaching the consumer's mobile.
Modern phones come with Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
. This allows video to be sent from phone to phone over Bluetooth, which has the advantages that there is no data charge.
Apps
Mobile application developmentMobile application development
Mobile application development is the process by which application software is developed for small low-power handheld devices such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones...
, also known as mobile apps, has become a significant mobile content market since the release of the first iPhone from Apple in 2007. Prior to the release of Apple's phone product, the market for mobile applications (outside of games) had been quite limited. The bundling of the iPhone with an app store, as well as the iPhone's unique design and user interface, helped bring a large surge in mobile application use. It also enabled additional competition from other players. For example, Google's Android platform for mobile content has further increased the amount of app content available to mobile phone subscribers.
Some examples of mobile apps would be applications to manage travel schedules, buy movie tickets, preview video content, manage RSS news feeds, read digital version of popular newspapers, identify music, look at star constellations, view Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and much more.
Games
Mobile gameMobile game
A mobile game is a video game played on a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA, tablet computer or portable media player. This does not include games played on handheld video game systems such as Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable....
s are applications that allow people to play a game on a mobile handset. The main categories of mobile games include Puzzle/Strategy, Retro/Arcade, Action/Adventure, Card/Casino, Trivia/Word, Sports/Racing, given in approximate order of their popularity.
Several studies have shown that the majority of mobile games are bought and played by women. Sixty-five percent of mobile game revenue is driven by female wireless subscribers. They are the biggest driver of revenue for the Puzzle/Strategy category; comprising 72 percent of the total share of revenue, while men made up 28 percent (see Table 2). Women dominate revenue generation for all mobile game categories, with the exception of Action/Adventure mobile games, in which men drive 60 percent of the revenue for that category. It's also said that teens are three times as likely as those over twenty to play cell phone games.
Images
Mobile images are used as the wallpaper to a mobile phone, and are also available as screensavers. On some handsets images can also be set to display when a particular person calls the users. Sites like adg.ms allow users to download free content, however service operators such as Telus MobilityTelus Mobility
Telus Mobility is a division of Telus Communications which sells wireless services in Canada on its numerous networks. They currently have three different networks based on three different technologies: CDMA and HSPA+ on its mainstream networks, plus iDEN via its Mike division...
blocks non Telus website downloads.
Music
Mobile musicMobile music
Mobile music is music which is downloaded or streamed to mobile phones and played by mobile phones. Although many phones play music as ringtones, true "music phones" generally allow users to stream music or download music files over the internet via a WiFI connection or 3G cell phone connection. ...
is any audio file that is played on a mobile phone. Mobile music is normally formatted as an AAC (Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
) file or an MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, and comes in several different formats. Monophonic ringtones were the earliest form of ringtone, and played one tone at a time. This was improved upon with polyphonic ringtones, which played several tones at the same time so a more convincing melody could be created. The next step was to play clips of actual songs, which were dubbed Realtones. These are preferred by record labels as this evolution of the ringtone has allowed them to gain a cut of lucurative ringtone market. In short Realtones generate royalties for record labels (the master recording owners) as well as publishers (the writers), however, when Monophonic or Polyphonic ringtones are sold only publishing or "mechanical" royalties are incurred as no master recording has been exploited. Some companies promote covertones, which are ringtones that are recorded by cover bands to sound like a famous song. Recently Ringback tones have become available, which are played to the person calling the owner of the ringback tone. Voicetones are ringtones that play someone talking or shouting rather than music, and there are various of ringtones of natural and everyday sounds. Realtones are the most popular form of ringtones. As an example, they captures 76.4% of the US ringtone market in the second quarter of 2006, followed by monophonic and polyphonic ringtones at 12% and ringback tones and 11.5% – but monophonic and polyphonic ringtones are falling in popularity while ringback tones are growing. This trend is common around the globe. A recent innovation is the singtone, whereby "the user’s voice is recorded singing to a popular music track and then “tuned-up” automatically to sound good. This can then be downloaded as a ringtone or sent to another user’s mobile phone" said the director of Synchro Arts, the developers.
As well as mobile music there are full track downloads, which are an entire song encoded to play on a mobile phone. These can be purchased and bought over the mobile network, but data charges can make this prohibitive. The other way to get a song onto a mobile phone is by "side loading" it, which normally involves downloading the song onto a computer and then transferring it to the mobile phone via Bluetooth, infra-red or cable connections. It is possible to use a full track as a ringtone.
Mobile music is becoming an integral part of the music industry as a whole. In 2005 the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said it expects mobile music to generate more revenues that online music before the end of that year. In the first half of 2005 the digital music market grew enough to offset the fall in the traditional music market – without including the sale of ringtones, which still makes up the majority of mobile music sales around the globe.
Video
Mobile video comes in several forms including 3GPP3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...
, MPEG-4
MPEG-4
MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...
, RTSP and Flash Lite
Flash Lite
Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems. This version is intended for mobile phones and other portable electronic devices like Chumby and iRiver, and allows users of these devices to view multimedia content and applications...
.
Mobishows and Cellsodes
A Mobishow or a Cellsode are terms to describe a broadcast quality programme / series which has been produced, directed, edited and encoded for the mobile phone. Mobishows and Cellsodes can range from short video clips such as betting advice or the latest celebrity gossip, through to half hour drama serials. Examples include The AshesTwofour
Twofour is a UK independent media group that was founded in 1988 by Charles Wace, a former TV news producer and brother of financier Ian Wace. It has grown to become one of the largest independent media groups in the UK, employing over 350 people internationally....
and Mr Paparazzi Show which both were created for mobile viewing.
Radio
Mobile streaming radio is an application that streams on-demand audio channels or live radio stations to the mobile phone. In the U.S., mSpot was the first company to develop and commercialize streaming radio which went live in March 2005 on Sprint. Today all major carriers offer some sort streaming radio service featuring programmed stations based on popular genres and live stations which included both music and talk.TV
Mobile video also comes in the form of streaming TV over the mobile network, which must be a 2.5G or 3G network. This mimics a television station in that the user cannot elect to see what they wish but must watch whatever is on the channel at the time.There is also mobile broadcast TV, which operates like a traditional television station and broadcasts the content over a different spectrum. This frees up the mobile network to handle calls and other data usage, and because of the "one-to-many
One-to-many
One-to-many may refer to:* Multivalued function, a one-to-many function in mathematics* Fat link, a one-to-many link in hypertext* Point-to-multipoint communication, communication which has a one-to-many relation-See also:*One-to-one...
" nature of mobile broadcast TV the video quality is a lot better than that streamed over the mobile networks, which is a "one-to-one" system.
The problem is that broadcast technologies don't have a natural uplink, so for users to interact with the TV stream the service has to be closely integrated to the carriers mobile network. The main technologies for broadcast TV are DVB-H
DVB-H
DVB-H is one of three prevalent mobile TV formats. It is a technical specification for bringing broadcast services to mobile handsets. DVB-H was formally adopted as ETSI standard EN 302 304 in November 2004. The DVB-H specification can be downloaded from the official DVB-H website...
, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting
Digital Multimedia Broadcasting
Digital Multimedia Broadcasting is a digital radio transmission technology developed in South Korea as part of the national IT project for sending multimedia such as TV, radio and datacasting to mobile devices such as mobile phones...
(DMB) and MediaFLO
MediaFLO
MediaFLO is a technology developed by Qualcomm for transmitting audio, video and data to portable devices such as mobile phones and personal televisions, used for mobile television...
.
Live Video
Live video can also be streamed and shared from your cell phone through applications like QikQik
Qik is a mobile live video streaming and two-way video conferencing application that allows users to stream live video from their cell phones to the internet. Qik enables users to record and upload video directly from supported cell phones...
. The uploaded video can be shared to your friends through Emails or Social Networking sites. Most Live video streaming application works over the cell network or through Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
. They also require most users to have a dataplan from their cell phone carriers.
International trends
Since the late 1990s, mobile content has become an increasingly important market worldwide. The South Koreans are the worlds Leaders in Mobile Content and 3-G mobile networks JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese, followed closely by the Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
ans, are heavy users of their mobile phones and have been attaining custom mobile content for their devices for years. In fact, mobile phone use has begun to exceed the use of PCs in some countries. In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, mobile phone use and the accompanying use of mobile content has been slower to gain traction because of political issues and open networks do not exist in America.
On current trends, mobile phone content will play an increasing role in the lives of millions across the globe in the years ahead, as users will depend on their mobile phones to keep in touch not only with their friends but with world news, sports scores, the latest movies and music, and more.
Mobile content is usually downloaded through WAP sites, but new methods are on the rise. In Italy, 800,000 people are registered users to Passa Parola, an application that allows users to browse a big database for mobile content and directly download it to their handsets. This tool can also be used to recommend content to others, or send content as a gift.
An increasing number of people are also beginning to use applications like Qik to upload and share their videos from their cell phone to the internet. Mobile phone software like Qik allows user to share their videos to their friends through emails, SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
and even social networking sites like Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
and Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
.