Monday, February 12, 2007

Mobile industry + the next big thing = mobile tv

Well, if anyone still had any doubts about television - and all sorts of entertainment media - coming to mobile phones just about NOW, all they would have to do is take a quick look at the worlds largest mobile industry summit, starting today. The 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona is more like a television industry congress at times, especially looking at who is talking about what and why. To grab some of the headlines, as examples:

- Mobile Entertainment Summit - How mobile is changing TV forever
- Entertainment Summit - Clash of Cultures: Who wins when entertainment and communications converge?
- How mobile can be the next great information and entertainment channel
- Technology Symposium - Mobile TV

and so on...

Fair enough, lots of talk is of course about what is generating the revenue at the moment - which to a large extent seems to be made up of the developing markets - but mobile entertainment and mobile television is sexxxxxy, and everyone wants in on it.

As a pretty nice way to kick things off, it was today announced that the Sundance Film Festival is contributing with five made-for-mobile short films, which have been made as a part of the Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project. Amongst the directors are people like Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift) and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine).

Here's hoping they'll put them on the web when the congress is finished!

To sum it all up - mobile tv, in one way or another, is on its way. There's no escape, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Let's just, for the sake of all that's holy, hope that as much time and money is spent on making good content for them mobiles as there is for hosting congresses about mobile tv and sorting out the technical mumbo-jumbo.

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