RCR Wireless News met with PacketVideo’s VP of Marketing Gretchen Griswold for five minutes on the show floor to see where the multimedia software company is tapping into the wireless industry and what it sees coming down the pipeline.
Q: Where is PacketVideo experiencing the greatest growth in the industry?
A: We’re a multimedia software company embedded on a client. And, of course services have been expanding like crazy, not just in audio, in finding new ways of bringing music and business models of music for subscribers, but also video. One of the areas that we’re most interested in and that we see a nice convergence in is bringing together home networks with a mobile environment, and so our mobile operators (customers) can provide to their users more compelling reasons to purchase their mobile services by connecting the two. We have something called PacketVideo Connect; it’s a multimedia software service operator that is Digital Living Network Alliance certified. It’s a set of interoperability standards for hardware and file compatibility between consumer electronics products. Those guidelines have actually been expanded to include mobile devices and allowing those mobile devices to share media with the home network. That means if I download a full-track song over the air using my Verizon phone for example, I now have more value out of that song because I can share it or stream it to my home network. By the same token, if I stored a video on my home DVR and I’m out and about I can stream that to my phone and watch the video when I want or where I want.”
Q: What excites you most about where things have come since last year or where things are moving?
A: Well it’s kind of funny that you’re looking at things in one-year increments because we’re looking at one year or two years from now and what we can be doing to help our mobile operator customers develop services that are compelling, that are going to stick, that are going to increase ARPU. One of the things that actually I’m excited by is the number of people, who when you ask them, “Have you ever downloaded a song to your phone?” I’m getting many more yeses than I used to. And we do consumer research; we do try and find out how people are getting their media. Are they getting it from mobile sources? Are they so married to their iPod or some other personal stereo device that they can’t incorporate phones into the works? It’s loosening up, it’s actually loosening up and that’s a cool thing. Another thing that’s very exciting over the past year is the increased focus on user interface and usability; finding ways to make content easier to find from an end-user perspective and that of course leads directly to better merchandising and up-selling opportunities for the mobile operator.
Q: What do you think this industry is lacking most or where do you see the biggest barriers for your company? If something were to happen, would there just be an explosion?
A: I don’t think it’s ever going to be an explosion. I think that of course it would be great if the pace picked up a little bit in the adoption of services. But, just because of the way the value chain works it’s just not possible. PacketVideo actually has something called MediaFusion that is a little bit more of a modular approach to a client server solution that allows for a mobile operator to combine and unify their services on the back-end. Because it’s a modular approach and because it’s server driven as opposed to client driven, you can easily pull out and introduce and lower the risk of introducing new services. If you don’t have to wait for a 12- or 18-month development cycle where you put it on the phone and then launch the phone, instead you can do it from the back-end.”