While Sling Media’s software has been available for mobile phones since early 2006, Hutchison’s 3 is the first operator to offer and to promote its use over the mobile Internet. This is a landmark deal for Sling Media and other companies that offer place-shifting applications because with this deal Hutchison has essentially become the first mobile operator to adopt third-party place-shifting software as a Mobile TV platform. (Vodafone is currently running trials of Orb’s place-shifting application in Germany, but is not focused on Mobile TV services; in the US, Sprint has also partnered with Orb, but currently only offers access through its fixed line DSL networks.)
In China, as well as in much of Europe and the US, the discussion over Mobile TV so far has centered on which Mobile TV-specific technologies to use - DVB-H, MediaFlo, or DMB. In China, a homegrown Mobile TV technology standard, STiMi, was recently introduced as an option as well (as I discussed earlier in the month). With most operators worldwide still uncommitted to a Mobile TV technology, eyes will be on Hutchison to see whether or not the operator is able to monetize its X-Series bundle of applications; if successful, BusinessWeek tech analyst, Olga Kharif’s prediction from February 2006 may very well come true, that "wireless and wired broadband services providers will [in fact] jump onto the place-shifting bandwagon, [and] pronto."
In the meantime, however, there are still no 3G mobile networks in China so mobile data bandwidth is currently not fast enough to support quality streaming mobile video services. Even when the mobile data bandwidth problem is solved, China’s mobile operators have shown that they are not interested in merely providing the data bandwidth for mobile Internet access, as Hutchison is offering with X-Series. As I previously discussed in June 2006, China Mobile’s investment in Phoenix Television is a clear indication that the operator is to looking to make money from content sold over its mobile data networks, and would thus view place-shifting services as merely a bandwidth hog.
In the next 3-4 years, place-shifting applications will be mostly limited to serving the expat community living in China who crave a dose of television back home (re: my previous post about Slinging in Beijing). Otherwise, I don’t see a market for Slingbox-type technologies here in the near future.
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