Hottest Video Applications

For several years now, we’ve been in discussions with service providers, value added resellers, partners and content owners on what multimedia applications customers want. We’ve further defined this into not only what customers want, but what they are willing to pay for, actually use, and the revenue potential to providers of these services.  What has become very clear is that the list of these services has continued to grow on a global, regional and local level, and the expertise in developing, marketing and pricing these services.

In the “early days” of 3G networks (think 2003-2005) there was a lot of talk around person-to-person and related services. These included video telephony, video mail and video conferencing. One of the issues that quickly emerged was the “fax machine” syndrome – one needed someone else to video call, and the amount of 3G subscribers compared to 2/2.5G was very limited.  Also, video quality given mobile phone codec capabilities was less than optimal, pricing and tariffs were too high, and there was no way to know who had video services or who was on-line. Since then, network capabilities including Video Call Completion to Voice (VCCV) and presence using IMS have greatly increased the potential usage – but we have also seen the extreme take-off of other machine-person services.

While video portal and video streaming were available also from the beginning of 3G networks on circuit and packet access, we have seen the massive take-off now of video blogging (uploads and download access), live TV streaming and video push of personalized video clips.  While we’ve seen some traction for video/multimedia ringback tones – especially in Asia – this is a market that is still emerging being as it is dependent on person-to-person video calling and cultural norms.

So … what do you see as the hottest and most used video applications?  How are they being used today and what do customers want most in the future?  In other posts you can find more information about multimedia applications and how they are being marketed and sold today.