Motorola Pushing 'Follow Me' TV
Would you watch ABC's Lost or the movie War of the Worlds on your cell phone?
The answer would seem to be obvious to everyone -- except, that is, Motorola. The electronics giant is pushing a new 'Follow Me' TV feature that enables you to transfer your recorded TV shows (and home videos and pictures) to your mobile phone. The concept seems cool, which, of course, explains why it's being overhyped by some media analysts and journalists. But Americans will not watch long-form TV shows on their small cell phone screens. It defies common sense.
One 'Follow Me' feature that does make sense: You can use your cell phone to 'alert' your home Digital Video Recorder to record something. That's a nice feature in case you forgot to set the DVR before you left home.
To read a Chicago Sun-Times article on Motorola's 'Follow Me' TV, which includes comments from yours truly, click Here
To learn more, click Here
2 Comments:
Your comments about people watching an entire broadcast episode of a show or a full-length movie are generally correct in that people don't make the decision to "sit down in front of the cell-phone" to watch TV. But when you think about the "niche-moments" you have throughout your day, it is easy to catch up on a show (news or sports especially) while killing some time.
Our stats from Orb Networks (I am an Orb employee) and my personal experience bear this out. For example, I can easily sit thru a 1/2 hour show on a phone (Samsung I730)when I cam killing time in an airport or a few minutes here or there to catch up on ESPN or Headline News. Our stats for Orb Networks and our Orb Media show that typical usage is 15 minutes a day, with most of that usage on a remote PC (i.e. a laptop), but that mobile phone usage is going up quickly in the US. However, on a typical day in our European trials, we find that 43% of the users logged on an average of 5 times and nearly 10minutes per session average PER DAY--with most of that on a mobile phone. So the tide is changing....
I agree with you Swanni, it's a neat little trick to impress your friends and the other guy sitting in the airport twiddeling his thumbs, but I don't feel the average TV viewer enjoys watchin much on a 2 inch screen. Curt, I see your point in that I might watch a view sport highlights, but I could just as easily just get "the bottom line" scrolling on my phone.
I agree the future of mobile phones is moving to video, but at the same time more and more people are buying big 50 inch TV's, and shunning thier little 36 or 27 inchers.
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