Mobile phone carriers are eager for video to succeed on their 3G and 4G platforms because it represents a major new source of revenue. Apple's iPhone is the best handset yet for displaying that video. But Apple isn't going to allow this to happen without Cupertino gaining a substantial piece of the action. I'm sure discussions are taking place right now with Cingular where Apple is arguing that the carrier should make its video service iTunes-compatible.
February 02, 2007
I, Cringely:
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I had my first conversation-via-webcams the other day. It was... "novel". But utterly, utterly annoying. Constantly worrying about what your camera is displaying at all times is really distracting, but not the point here :)
The point is that visuals take up a large chunk of our mind's processing power - betraying the beauty of a multi-tasking and often extremely simplistic interface. This is why I'm really not going to bother webcamming conversations again - I can't get on with other stuff so efficiently.
Mobile TV suffers from the same problem - when you're mobile, you need to be able to see your environment much more than you need to be able to hear it (e.g. I know when to jump off the bus even while listening to music). The beauty of TV is that it absorbs you utterly. "Mobile TV" can almost be considered an oxymoron.
Mobile TV is one of the biggest contradictions to consumer-led market "efficiency" I can think of - carriers would make way more money by opening up the networks, making uploading easier, etc. But they insist on digging themself into a hole, it seems.
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