We’ve been hearing about the possibilities of YouTube pushing mobile for awhile. A few people we have talked with in the mobile industry have said that the company has been burning the midnight oil working on getting a mobile offering out as soon as possible. Now it looks like YouTube CEO Chad Hurley said at an advertising conference that the company hopes to “have something on a mobile device within the next year.” YouTube already offers uploading from video-enabled phones, but hasn’t released any other major mobile services to date.
YouTube’s mobile strategy remains unclear, but the company has options. The company could do a carrier deal and work within the carrier deck or go straight to consumer. The company has a relationship with Cingular, though it’s strictly marketing for now, but carriers are way more squeamish about copyright issues than YouTube’s recent acquirer Google. The company can build a WAP site and java client and go off deck — Google has often gone direct to consumer with mobile applications, though has been starting to do a few carrier deals more recently. Mobile YouTube on or off deck could actually dramatically grow wireless data usage, so the carriers will begrudgingly like them no matter what they do.
Already startups are creating sharing-services using mobile devices, like Juice Wireless and Veeker. Using standard MMS and video camera phone content, the technology is not that hard to create a service. Taking video clips in all their various forms and porting that to the endless amounts of mobile devices is where the complexity lies. Many of the mobile video sharing companies are focusing on a web interface first while trying to tackle a mobile interface.
Given Google’s recent $1.65 billion purchase of the company, there’s been a lot of speculation about what a Gootube mobile offering would look like. We’re not sure, but the combination could be pretty powerful.
14 comments so far
4:22 PM PT
coming to iPhone, you mean.
4:44 PM PT
Certainly not coming to http://www.youtube.mobi.
5:03 PM PT
I wonder if the guys behind zamzar.com could build something into their file conversion tools that would convert the youtube.com swf files on the fly and beat YouTube to it like srobbin.com did with Google Video.
7:59 PM PT
Thanks shawn. I never knew abt zamzar.com. Nice service.
8:34 PM PT
This seems like an announcement made because their competitor MySpace has already said they’re going to do it.
With the majority of mobile users not interested in video at this time, I’m not sure what, if anything, this means.
8:47 PM PT
I don’t think carrier will like this. No body is foolish enough to pay per KB when watching video on mobile. Carriers don’t make any money on Unlimited data. That also means, carriers will remain as fat pipes.
Since YouTube mobile will directly compete with some of the IMS services carriers are dreaming to prove that they are more than fat pipes. YouTube mobile is going to make those IMS hyped up services dead before they are born. For consumers, good news is in the coming, that The Walled Garden is about to be opened up.
9:20 PM PT
Mobile is a platform that Google has to involved in if they’re to be competitive; but it remains to be seen if advertising can be placed on mobile devices without annoying the user. It could be just a lot of clutter.
5:39 AM PT
Androhair: Youtube is a really good idea but in the web video segment, I dont think spreading that mucho and investing in this technologies will be a productive thing for the company, maybe in the economic side could be but when specializing in web video, they still have a lot of department where to work, lets say having a more attractive website, giving the option to download the video but with a good quality and also showing them better…Lets se what happens
http://www.androhair.com
9:08 AM PT
Looks like Microsoft’s Soapbox is already doing this.
http://soapboxteam.spaces.live.com
2:52 PM PT
murali, why would you think carriers don’t make money on unlimited data? In the US, at least, carriers only offer services that make money. They might be willing to take hits on handset subsidies for the sake of competition, but not on service revenues. If unlimited data plans weren’t profitable, they wouldn’t be offered.
6:12 PM PT
Just found this by someone from UCLA who beat YouTube to it. http://tinytube.net
10:33 PM PT
Jesse,
Unlimited Data means carriers are reduced to the level of bit haulers or fat pipes.
A voice call is currently charged at an average of 4-6 cents per minute(including all unlimited eve & weekend plans) to get profits. A $19.99 unlimited plan means roughly 350-500 minutes. If I subscribe to $19.99 unlimited data plan and use a GPRS phone, and assume that I use it for 1 hour a day, that would mean 30 hours a month or 1800 minutes a month. I pay 19.99 means, wireless carrier gets 1 cent per each minute of network usage. 3-5 cents a minute loss to the carrier.
And, why would I use just only for an hour when I have unlimited data plan?
2:46 PM PT
you better use WiFi and (( truphone )) when downloading these videos otherwise the carrier are going to get rich on us again…
10:32 PM PT
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