@ Contenido Movil: More On Mobile Video In LatAm

A lot of companies are looking at selling mobile video in Latin America, normally making sure that their service runs on 2.5G networks as well as higher ones. As in many cases all over the world with mobile content the technical issue is smaller than the business issue. “We could do video right now but we have to work out the payment structure and revenue share with operators, find out how that’s going to work,” Phil Perry, customer service manager for Digital Orchid told me.
Inmobia produces some original mobile video (POV Murder, an action show with 20 one-minute episodes and Almost Hollywood, a reality show about four unknown actors trying to make a movie). The interesting thing is that the company has gone with subtitles for the translation. “When we first tried it we thought ‘this is not going to work'” Mads Galsgaad from Inmobia told me. “Subtitles on a mobile phone is not going to work… but you can actually read what’s going on.” He demonstrated with english subtitles and he was right — the subtitles are the size of text that normally appears on a mobile phone screen anyway. Plus, sound can be an issue with mobile video if the person isn’t wearing headphones, and the subtitles alleviate that.
Gads got in my good books by being the only person I spoke to who would even hazard a guess as to the rough price of video downloads in Latin America. “That depends on the operator… it depends on whether they want to do a subscription basis, a per download, or if they want to do an all you can download package, so it’s really up to the operator,” he said, but when pressed on a per download price suggested “maybe 50c per download”. He said there was a lot of focus on telenovelas in Latin America (soap operas) which indicated an audience receptive to the content Inmobia produces. Plus there are 200 million mobile phones in Latin America versus 80 pay TV subscribers. “If we need to reach critical mass it’s more likely to happen with mobile phones as a medium…[there’s less video phones] true, but that’s going to change over time with the upgrade cycle.”
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@ Contenido Movil: Mobile Video In Latin America

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