Mobiles in starring role

The Intimacy of Strangers, a 20 minute film aired at media club The Hospital on Monday night, has real people chatting on their mobiles as the stars.

The filmmakers filmed them first using a microphone hidden under a skateboard, then asked their permission afterwards. This means the body language of the callers is deliciously true to life.

The biggest star of the film is a bloke phoning a friend in South Africa from a trip to the UK, and outlining mutual friends' tangled emotional lives. It's not ideal, he says of a friends new man, "he still works with his ex-wife, so he sees her every day".

The film is upbeat - most of the callers are happy - and mobile phone masts play a haunting role in close ups - sometimes depicted surrounded by the voices of callers.

With mobile operator 02 saying the average mobile TV viewer in their trial watches TV for 23 minutes, the film would be ideal to watch on a mobile phone. And I bet the viewers would pick up the phone and call someone afterwards.

The film was directed by German Eva Weber while she was at the National Film and Television School and produced by Samantha Zarzosa. They plan to raise funds to make a feature-length film, based on the same idea, but fictional.
http://www.theintimacyofstrangers.com/

Penetration hits 100% in Europe

"At the end of last year, the western European mobile market hit a major milestone - it officially became 100% penetrated.

"That should mean that everyone in the region, including every pensioner and new-born baby, has signed up to a mobile phone package. But it doesn't," says Informa's Mobile Communications newsletter, which collects monthly data on mobile subscriber growth.

Informa points out that many European consumers have two or more mobile subscriptions, while some have none. The fact that there are still people in the region without mobiles, helps to explain why "in every month of 2005, the region added more net subscribers than in the corresponding month of 2004".

It says 11 of the 16 major markets in western Europe now have penetration rates above the 100% mark. The highest penetration levels at the end of the year were Luxembourg (160%), Italy (119%), Portugal (114%) and Sweden (112%). Others above 100% included Greece, the UK, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark.
www.informatm.com

Adult approach

At a seminar on Adult content for mobiles organised by the Network for Online Commerce and 160 Characters, Ashley Clark of CC Media, said his top billing mobile customer had spent $4,000 on chat services since June. He said CC Media has a turnover of $70,000 to $95,000 a day.

Julia Dimambro, managing director of Cherry Media, which sells softcore images and "wallpaper" for phones but is starting to offer more hardcore, recommended the direct-to-consumer approach. She believes advertising your services can often be a more profitable route to market than negotiating to be on operators' portals.

Mike Grenville of 160 Characters said that if mobile operators did not get their act together on issues like revenue sharing and the way in which downloading third-party data incur charges, he could see people downloading adult content on to Apple Ipods and other mobile music devices and paying to unlock it at a later date.

A speaker from Playboy, which is already getting involved in podcasting (voice broadcasts you download on to an Ipod or similar) cancelled his appearance due to family problems.

But the seminar drew a large and diverse audience. As well as a representative from Soho baron Paul Raymond's empire, there was content aggregator Mobile Streams, which includes adult content among its information, venture capital firm Interregnum, and top IT lawyer Ingrid Silver from DentonWildeSapte.

Mr Clark, who is business development manager of CC Media, said his typical customer spends $550 a year and, perhaps, $750 in his time as a customer, so the important thing is to keep offering new services to keep them interested.
www.noconline.org
www.160characters.org

TV to go

O2, the UK-based mobile operator, and technology firm Arqiva, said on Tuesday that a trial of television over mobile in Oxford, was proving popular with the 375 users on it.

Average usage was three hours a week, with the length of connection lasting about 23 minutes, with one or two sessions per day. Mike Short of 02 said he believed a key factor in take up was the range of channels on offer. The choice included a selection of channels from the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Five, Sky, MTV and Eurosports.

For TV schedulers, mobile TV could present some challenges as viewing peaks tended to be different from the way people watch fixed televisions. The commute to work, lunchtimes and the commute home all seemed to be popular viewing times.

Mobile TV triallists were not paying to use the service, but 76% said they would subscribe if the service became available within 12 months. However, O2 wasn't saying when it would be able to launch a service because the best spectrum for the service is difficult to obtain.

The level of usage may also be distorted by the fact the trial was free. O2 said it thought, mobile customers would be willing to pay 8-10 pounds a month for the service.

The trial - which is continuing - makes use of Digital Video Broadcasting - handheld (DVB-H), a standard which is supported by Nokia, as well as Nokia mobiles.

Mr Short warned that the UK lagged many other countries in what could be a very important outlet for television.
www.o2.com
www.arqiva.com