TORONTO – The spiffy new Treo 700wx from Palm was launched in Canada with Bell Mobility today.
It has a big (for a handheld), bright touch-screen. It’s a smart phone with numerous bells and whistles with push e-mail and a camera, 64MB of RAM and integrated Bluetooth. It runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, meaning web access is simple, quick and easy (when on the right network).
So, with the explosion of video (of the free variety) available on the web that is easily viewable on such a device, who needs DVB-H, the nascent standard which stands for digital video broadcast – handheld, from a wireless operator?
If customers can download untold numbers of video streams to their new Treo 700wx from YouTube, or CTV.ca or stream their entire home TV lineup Slingbox to it for free, why pay $15 a month from Telus for its MobiTV service?
Why indeed, Palm’s senior director of new product development, Peter Skillman, told Cartt.ca.
"I think DVB-H might fail because free video is getting so good," he said.
"It’s too early to say and this does not reflect company policy but we have not invested heavily in DVB-H for several reasons. The first is that the frequency in which it operates is different in the U.S. than Europe, so we have to wait for chipsets to come out to support multiple frequencies."
Couple the technical issues with varied business models, none of which are paying their way, and Skillman sees a troubled DVB-H field. "They are not going to magically harmonize all of this in 2007."
"If I can get all of the web – everything – clips of Mats Sundin’s 500th goal and entire episodes of 24… do people really want to pay 15 dollars a month for content they already get over their cable?"
"It’s about choice," he continued. "Now, the argument against that has historically been that the carriers can not support a unicast model… as opposed to the multicast model that’s more efficient in terms of network loading. But I believe there are going to be solutions to figuring out how to do that."
Skillman said the mobile TV market emerging in Japan may be the best model, where subscribers get multiple channels for free because it’s ad-supported. "If that model evolves in the U.S. or in Europe… then my answer (on DVB-H) is different."
"Today, everybody wants to monetize it (with a subscription fee) and because of that, I think it’s going to fail and let’s remember, it’s adding a new radio, another $10 chipset, another antenna and there are all the issues of making those radios playing nice and interconnecting at the same time."
"This is a real threat to companies like MobiTV."
