Mobile Entertainment

But this week I did indeed see such a warning, when I took possession of an Nokia N95 8GB. My main aim is to test drive the new Nokia Music Store – and I certainly will – but what struck me immediately was the fact that this device comes embedded with the Spider-man 3 movie.

This promotion went little-reported in the press. I suppose this is because a free film is seen as a sales sweetener rather than a radical new area of mobile content. It’s not the first time a full-length motion picture has gone mobile. Sony and Nokia did a similar promo earlier this year with the movie Ghost Rider.

But the idea goes back to 2005, when Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Spider-Man 2 went on sale in the UK via Carphone Warehouse, shipping out on MMC cards (remember them?) at £19.99 each. I believe there were plans to follow up with Hitch, Ghostbusters, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Stuart Little. Not sure whether they saw the light of day, mind.

Clearly the public weren’t too bothered. Yet still Sony Pictures (always Sony) chipped away, later trying the new approach of offering a streaming service (with KT Telecom, Sprint and 3 Italia) through which consumers could rent a film, pause it and return to it at leisure. Not sure what happened to that idea either.

Perhaps the Spider-Man 3/N95 project represents a more robust approach. I’m presuming Nokia wrote out a fat cheque to Sony, while the studio created Spidey games, ringtones and additional video clips for Nokia’s download store. Everybody wins – including the consumer, who pays no direct fee for the movie.

I wonder what the traditional home video industry makes of it though. Spider-man 3 only hit DVD in the UK a few days before the N95 8GB shipped. I used to work in that business and I know how precious those ‘windows’ between cinema, DVD, pay TV and terrestrial can be. I also wonder whether the studios are looking at the example of Prince, who sold his last album to a UK newspaper, which then gave it free to readers.

I’m not suggesting new movies will debut on mobile, but the medium might offer a means to monetise back catalogue. I look forward to seeing Bergman’s Cries And Whispers shipping on a pink LG Shine soon.