In an industry as young as mobile content its unusual to find a company thats even five years old, let alone ten.
But it’s the latter anniversary that mobile TV pioneer MobiTV will be celebrating next year.
In August the company said it had amassed four million subscribers to the streaming mobile TV services it powers for the likes of Sprint, AT&T Wireless, Alltel, Telus, Rogers and Bell Mobility.
Four million subscribers to anything is a lot in the world of mobile content, especially when it’s double the figure of 18 months earlier. That’s robust growth. But you will also have noticed that the MobiTV customer base is overwhelmingly North American.
That’s because 18 months ago the company pulled back from an ambitious European expansion plan that began in spring 2005 and counted 3 and Orange among its early contract wins.
The honeymoon perod didn’t last, however. Firstly, the task of inking deals with local content providers on a continental basis was ultimately just too big a task for what was essentially a start-up company.
Secondly, pay TV giants like Sky, which already had the choicest content, soon figured the mobile tech out for themselves and struck their own direct deals with operators; MobiTV was effectively marginalised.
The company withdrew from Europe almost overnight last April, just two years into its adventure, in order to focus on its core US and Canadian customers. And that was that. Or so it was thought, because MobiTV retained its R&D facilty in Stockholm and it’s from this engineering base that the company is striking out again.
IBC played host to the rebirth last month, when MobiTV confirmed its new European managing director, Anders Norström, would oversee the roll-out of its Optimised Delivery Server (ODS) across the continent.
MobiTV says ODS will enable mobile and online service providers to deliver secure and optimised VOD and downloadable media over broadband and wireless networks.
For Norström, the platform-first approach will enable the company to build a beachhead over which it can eventually roll out more comprehensive and ambitious streaming TV services.
He says: “We are taking on Europe again, but this time with a more solid platform that will help us trampoline into the market. It’s a fresh start and we expect to ramp quickly.”
The company is certainly aiming high – Norström says the ‘big five’ multi-national operators in Europe are in its sights, pointing out that they are the only channels with the critical mass of customers required to roll out mobile video in way that makes sense for broadcaster and advertiser partners.
Crucially, Norström adds that the Stockholm engineering facility has enabled MobiTV to address one of its main issues from the first foray into Europe, which was that technical support for its customers was always an eight-hour time difference away in the Californian HQ. It’s also recruiting local account managers to handle the commercial side of things.
Will MobiTV seek to aggregate European video content once more? Norström is adamant it will. He says: “We have the standalone delivery platform, but we’re also a white-labeled managed service. We’re absolutely involved in broadcast content procurement, but we’re also looking at niche verticals like finance for corporate clients”.
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