Mobi TV
Posted on July 13, 2006
Filed Under What's New, Companies |
It’s a day when the mobile content world took a couple of important steps forward. First Mobi TV raised $70 million in round C funding.
“We have taken tremendous strides to develop this rapidly emerging market across three continents over the last few years,” said Phillip Alvelda, CEO, chairman and co-founder, MobiTV. “These rather substantial funds will help us capitalize on MobiTV’s head start and position as the premiere brand in mobile television. We plan to use these funds to provide even more television content on more devices, across more networks, and in more countries around the world.”
Then Gotuit, a digital media company delivering on demand video products to cable, broadband and mobile, announced today that is has been awarded its latest patent covering the use of metadata to enhance the experience of video search, video navigation, and the management/viewing of stored media.
R&D for future audio-visual services across networks are coming along fine in the USA but what about Europe? While US companies access the venture capital markets and plough a straight furrow, European companies are waiting on the 7th Framework Programme of R&D funding.
Because the EU’s bureaucratic wheels turn so slowly it could be another eighteeen months before any EU funding is released for these networked audio-visual service infrastructure tools.
Last Autum I was rapporteur at two workshops in Brussels called to identify new research priorities in future networked audio-visual media. This summer there are more workshops. The one priority you can’t mention at these workshops is this: Hurry UP!
No doubt next year there will be more workshops but new media services have a habit of happening quickly and the ramp up is steeper than anything we’ve ever seen - MySpace last month got more than 30 billion hits.
Why is it Europeans are so hopeless at getting abreast of real ideas, I mean ideas that don’t just float around, along with the coffee aroma? I have a feeling it’s because there is a subsidy system in place.
For may of the companies in Europe looking at making a play in new content services or tools, there’s one reassuring factor. There’s always that subsidy lying up a head.
In one workshop I attended the theme was almost like an Elmore Leonard novel. Not Get Shorty, but Get Google. Before that it was Get Microsoft (a fine of Euro 280 million recently shows the whistle on the Get Microsoft game didn’t blow yet). In the ’80s it was Get Sony, or Get IBM.
Europeans need to understand that innovation is no luxury, it’s a way of life.
Comments
WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'wp_comments.MYI'. (errno: 144)]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '132' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date
Leave a Reply