Jeff Whatcott on bringing online video to smartphones.
Earlier this week, online video technology firm Brightcove launched its App SDK for Android, helping broadcasters and media firms create Android apps including video content.
The SDK includes templates to support Adobe's Flash Player 10.1, which has also just been released for Android - or at least those Android handsets running the latest 'Froyo' version of Google's OS.
ME talked to Jeff Whatcott, SVP of marketing for Brightcove, about the new SDK, and also how the company sees the mobile space.
Brightcove built its business helping media companies distribute video online, but the company's platform is evolving to support other platforms, including connected TVs and mobiles.
"We allow organisations to deliver video to all kinds of smartphones and mobile devices, including Apple's iOS environment, Android, Nokia, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Palm through our support for Flash Player 10.1," says Whatcott.
"Fundamentally what we do is help deliver and track usage of that video, monetise it with advertising, and continuously distribute video as quick as our customers can produce it."
In the UK, Brightcove already works with the likes of ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, The Guardian and the Financial Times on their websites, and is seeing its client base increasingly looking to take their video content to mobile.
Whatcott thinks now is the right time for Brightcove to be supporting Android specifically, too. "Android shipments have exceeded iPhone shipments, and continue to accelerate," he says - Google just announced that 160,000 Android handsets are being activated every day.
"It's free, pretty good - if not quite the user experience that you have with the iPhone - and the number of apps is growing, with lots of developer excitement. Clearly it's going to be a successful platform."
In fact, he goes further than that.
"Within two to three years, we're going to have in the mobile world what we had in the PC world a decade ago with Windows and Mac. The equivalent of Windows - the dominant smartphone platform - will be Android. And the people who care most about design and user experience will be attracted to the iOS platform, which will always be premium-priced and have that Apple-controlled environment around it."
Meanwhile, Brightcove is watching the progress of Windows Phone 7, Palm's webOS and Nokia's MeeGo platforms, although Whatcott describes them as more likely to be having "defensible niches" than taking on Android. However, the fact that they're supporting Flash means Brightcove will be able to target them too.
The launch of the Android SDK follows Brightcove's iPhone SDK, which was released last November. It's already been used for the Football Association's official England iPhone app, says Whatcott.
He also says that Brightcove's clients have slightly different expectations when looking to launch video apps or video within their existing apps.
It's partly a case of technical demands, ensuring that video is delivered at the best possible quality to different handsets on different networks. But Whatcott says companies are also looking for help to bring the advertising they use around video on their websites to their mobile apps too.
"It's more complicated, because most of the advertising technology in the world has been created around the assumption of the availability of Flash," he says.
"When you get to iOS, for reasons that are not entirely clear, there is no Flash, so we have to rely on video delivery through HTML5. But HTML5 advertising technology is in its infancy. HTML5 is today where Flash advertising was in 2004, although we're working feverishly with our partners to eliminate the disparity."
In fact, Whatcott says that many media firms get a sharp awakening when starting to launch video on iOS devices, since they assume they can do all the same advertising stuff they do on their websites, as well as other features.
"Media companies and marketers don't just want to have video playback, they want to have it playback with advertising, or in a branded player with their own logos and overlays," he says.
"They want to get analytics around the advertising and playback of video - how many people, how far they watched, where they were, whether they shared video with friends or not. But for HTML5, none of that technology is there. We're having to write a lot of additional code to make that possible."
So it's not that HTML5 isn't capable of doing all this stuff. It's just that Brightcove is having to code it from scratch, according to Whatcott. Which in a way, is a sign that Apple's attempt to drag media firms and marketers away from Flash and into HTML5 is having an impact.
"When Apple said they wouldn't support Flash, they set their platform back to 2004, and the entire industry is having to retool itself around this new open standard of HTML5," he says.
"We're not complaining - it's important to have standards - but customers weren't always necessarily aware of this, and their expectations weren't managed accordingly. Our job is to make sure our customers do not become collateral damage in the platform wars."
Part of that includes providing the templates in its Android SDK for Flash 10.1. Whatcott says that when Android users visit a website that uses Brightcove video, they'll be able to watch it as usual if they have Flash 10.1 installed.
However, he points out that this isn't necessarily a satisfying experience. "The screen is small, and you're interacting with touch rather than a mouse. You may just see a little box with video, but not the button that sets it to full-screen. It's a user experience challenge."
Brightcove's templates aim to help this by letting website owners redirect Android browsers to customised versions of their pages, with bigger buttons and less clutter.
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