Mobile TV and video platform MobiTV has filed its S-1 with the SEC this afternoon. In the public offering, MobiTV plans to raise as much as $75 million.
For background, MobiTV was founded in 1999 and was one of the pioneers in bringing live and on-demand TV to mobile devices. The company boasts partnerships with a number of carriers and content providers such as NBC, ESPN, Disney, CBS, Warner Music and more. And MobiTV has raised approximately $115 million from a wide range of investors, including Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Adobe Ventures and Hearst Ventures. → Read More
Over 1 million of users have purchased and downloaded the MobiTV iPhone app, propelling it to number two on Apple’s Top Grossing apps list.
The application (iTunes link), which was released in April 2010 and is only available to users in the United States, features live TV programming and video-on-demand content from every major network, and many of the most popular cable channels.
But the real reason it has now surpassed 1 million downloads on the App Store is the planet’s largest football event, the World Cup – all the games are broadcast through MobiTV for iPhone. → Read More
Last week, T-Mobile teased us all with a little jab on Twitter about the HTC HD2 that it will be shipping soon. It was exciting and, to be frank, it made me a little antsy. As promised, T-Mobile announced new features for the HD2 at Mobile World Congress today and I’ve gotta say, it isn’t all that thrilling. → Read More
Once again, a company is attacking instructions on how to subvert their control. This time it’s HowardForums who posted a list of links to mobiTV that basically give Sprint users free access to mobiTV’s offerings. The instructions and links appear below. → Read More
I love me some History Channel and now I can love it on my phone, in public. A&E Television Networks and MobiTV, Inc., announced the launch of A&E Mobile and The History Channel Mobile available through the MobiTV service on participating mobile carriers throughout the U.S. And before you say, “who the hell would want to watch this stuff on a little cell phone screen?” the answer is me, I would. I kill a lot of time waiting for meetings by watching video clips on my phone, and I can’t be the only one viewing this stuff. Content will include clips from The History Channel’s Dogfights and Modern Marvels as well as Dog the Bounty Hunter and Criss Angel Mindfreak from A&E Network. MobiTV → Read More
NBC Universal has announced they will be providing on-demand mobile TV content in conjunction with MobiTV for the US market. Primetime NBC shows like The Office and Heroes will soon be available on your mobile phone. A slew of other NBCU channels, including USA, Bravo, SCI FI, Telemundo and mun2, will offer ad-supported programming. MobiTV will also have several ad-supported on demand shows for free including Friday Night Lights. Service will be $1.99 per primetime show for a 24 hour viewing period. No word on who the provider will be, but service is expected to hit the ground running sometime in Q2. My prayers have been answered: Hayden Panettiere on my phone whenever I want. MobiTV Press Release [via Reuters] → Read More
There was a bit of buzz a couple of days ago about MobiTV raising another $30 million in capital, adding to it’s already whopping $70 million from previous financings. That’s a lot of money for a startup that lets some people watch a few TV shows on their cell phones. It’s effectively a cable television service that only does business with people who have 2 inch TVs, and journalists like Mathew Ingram are openly questioning why MobiTV needs this money. But there may be more to it than that. The entire TV world is being turned upside down. And I’m wondering if MobiTV has a major announcement to make in the near future. YouTube set a price point for a service allowing consumers to watch TV clips online. Most popular TV shows are now available for legal download at iTunes, and Apples’ upcoming iTV device will allow consumers to watch those shows on their normal televisions. A ton of startups are trying to conquer online TV by starting niche. The networks all have their own online products. Even the online TV guide space is hot, and investments are pouring in. I think the real win isn’t to distribute TV over mobile devices – that’s a niche service that isn’t likely to morph into a massive consumer market. But giving people TV over the Internet generally, where they can consume it on a normal television, a PC and/or a mobile device? That’s a killer product. We’re tracking two startups, The Venice Project and TIOTI, who are addressing this. But no one besides MobiTV has an existing, battle-tested platform, with distibution deals and relationships already in place. That is a large competitive advantage. MobiTV has a little know product that allows users to watch TV on computer without a tuner (or “cheating” via slingbox or Orb). You can watch 24 channels on a PC, but only if you are accessing the Internet from an AT&T Wi-Fi hot spot. Thats a product of little use. But if MobiTV can negotiate with the cable companies and networks to expand the service and let people watch those shows from any broadband connection, they have a disruptive product on their hands. So what’s the $100 million for? Maybe its to pay off the people who need to be paid off. They have a big valuation now, and giving stock away is an option. This is how → Read More
As a follow up to our previous post on TV network activity on the Internet and through iTunes, we’ve further explored television programming and how it’s playing out on the web beyond the major networks. I will steer clear of yahoo, google, youtube… all the sites that have been covered extensively on this site. Instead, I want to highlight a few of the less covered services. It’s hard to draw a line between the sites I just mentioned and those I’ll discuss below, as they share many features (and many use Flash as the underlying technology). One difference is the sites above don’t make programming decisions for users. The sites below do offer some form of programming – there are decisions made by someone about what to present on these sites and when to present it. There’s room for both approaches online and while most eyes and venture dollars are flowing to video portals right now, I believe we’ll eventually see a similar interest from the startup community in programming. I’m Too Old For This!!! Not surprisingly, much online programming, like MTV Overdrive, caters to an under-25 crowd, but there’s a selection of good stuff for the rest of us: BloombergTV and MLB.tv, for example, offer relevant content and strong channel-like experiences online. In the youth market, the influence of MTV is unmistakable. ManiaTV, Fuse.tv, MusicplusTV, and CurrentTV, while each certainly different in its own right, believe that some combination of music, reality, edginess, and/or political and social awareness, are the keys to success. ManiaTv So this is what happened to Tom Green? Maybe I’m not too old for this, because I like ManiaTv. Check out Freak Show! There’s enough good stuff to watch on here that I’m actually surprised it doesn’t have a bigger audience, particularly given the explosion in video sites in the last 6 months. I think there’s room for this kind of programming and while the Alexa numbers don’t suggest a flop, it’s certainly not booming. Whether or not their audience is sufficient for profitability, I don’t know. At least they don’t have to worry about huge production costs. CurrentTV Best known as the Al Gore vehicle, Current is for those a bit more politically minded and socially active. There’s a good lineup of original programming, there appears to be pretty strong community participation, and I find it to be a nice usable site, but it → Read More
Downloadable television, first made popular by Tivo and its competitors, is compelling stuff. As consumers become accustomed to watching a show whenever they choose, pausing at will and fast tracking through commercials, tuning in to a station at a scheduled broadcast time seems quaint at best. Today, 7% of U.S. households have a digital video recorder, or DVR and most cable companies offer a DVR as an option. File trading networks, such as bittorent, are also extremely popular (if sometimes illegal) choices for consumers wanting access to time-shifted television content. While DVRs are great, content producers and distributors are less than thrilled by the loss in revenue from all those skipped commercials. Also, DVR’d shows cannot be easily transferred to mobile devices or otherwise viewed away from their home television. Some consumers want more flexibility and options. Enter downloadable television, spearheaded by iTunes. On October 12 2005, Apple introduced iTunes 6.0 which added support for purchasing and viewing of video content from the iTunes Music Store. iTunes initially offered a selection of several thousand music videos and five TV shows, including most notably ABC’s Lost and Desperate Housewives, as well as the collection from past seasons. New shows are available 24 hours after the initial broadcast. Since that time, the collection has expanded with NBC Universal, USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel shows, and Viacom, in addition to further Disney-owned networks’ shows. iTunes also gives the ability to view Apple’s large collection of movie trailers. Format for purchased Videos is 128 kbit/s Protected MPEG-4 video. By January 2006, iTunes offered over 40 television shows for download, including, most recently, additions from Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV with episodes of such shows as the Daily Show, Spongebob Squarepants, South Park, and Punk’d. Showtime added some content in February. The networks, though, are hoping that iTunes will not be the only way people watch TV on their computers. CBS, Fox and ABC are all experimenting with their own direct downloads or streaming. ABC ABC is offering streaming versions of a number of its hit shows to viewers within the U.S. for no charge: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias, and Commander in Chief. The shows are viewable in 400×700 Flash format. On the plus side, ABC’s offering is browser and platform agnostic, and are free. On the minus side, and these are big ones, you must be online to view the show. You can’t take these → Read More
