Monday October 5, 2009 – Shelby Cunningham
Smartphones are responsible for giving consumers one of their video fixes these days. They’re not just for early adaptors or businesses anymore, but are now being toted around by teenagers, poor twenty-somethings and every other segment of the population. And now that smartphone shipments are seeing some growth, what new innovations will they bring to the table?
It wasn’t until the era of the iPhone, Android and Pre that handsets handled video the way people actually wanted to watch it on the small screen. This generation of smartphones brings a form factor that is very video application friendly. AVC video compression in handsets is very mainstream now. In 2009 about 105 million AVC handsets shipped worldwide, and that will increase to 173 million in 2010.
Source: DTC
As more and more consumers pick up these higher end smartphones, this will allow for further innovation and video services. Third parties have already embraced the platform, and the success they are seeing is encouraging for content owners and services. The mobile TV platform is poised to see growth in the near future as well, with the hopeful take-up of mobile TV and other streamed content. So pull out your smartphone and watch some video, because that’s where most of the innovation is, not on your television set.
