Mobile Video: Hype or Real Business Opportunities?

Mobile services in Asian countries and US are so different, especially in the mobile video area. Mobile video has been identified as one of the key application technology to drive the demand of 3G and mobile broadband. Many mobile subscribers in Japan, and Korea have enjoyed mobile video services including mobile games, terrestrial TV programs and even mobile soap operas for sometime, while in the US, mobile video service is just taking off. What is the US market falling behind the Asian counterparts in terms of technology and services? How can the US market catch up in the mobile video services, given the fact that “AMERICANS LOVE TV!”?

• What are the technologies, both in network infrastructure and content encoding, required to offer a high business value mobile services?
• What are the technical challenges to offer mobile video services?
• Why are CDMA carriers faster in offering such services, as opposed to GSM carriers?
• What are the critical technologies or marketing strategies to provide mobile video services?
• Can the US service providers generate enough revenue from mobile video services?
• What are end users’ expectations in the mobile video market?
• Does the US market have any specific features or consumer behaviors that the service providers need to address?

In this seminar, we will explore both from business and technology perspective about the mobile video. Several startups with mobile video related products based on both server and client technology will offer their insights regarding cutting-edge technologies and marketing strategies.

Contact and More Information:

Moderator:

Speakers:

Devkumar R. Gandhi
CEO
NEXAGE

Devkumar is the Founder and CEO of NEXAGE, Inc. He is responsible for the Management and Strategic direction of the company. Devkumar has a wealth of expertise and experience in developing and maintaining large wireless networks and IT systems that are capable of handling literally millions of customers and transactions a day. Devkumar has also successfully built, managed and integrated global operations and technology teams.

Since 2004, Devkumar has been heavily involved in the mobile TV and Video streaming technologies for 3G operators and has developed an extensive knowledge of the Mobile TV and Video streaming platforms and services. From 2004 to 2005, he advised and managed a Hutchison Whampoa company, Vidiator’s Gobal business development and sales group. Hutchison 3 was the first operator to launch a 3G / UMTS networks and Devkumar has worked extensively with Hutch 3 in UK, Italy, Sweden and Hong Kong. Devkumar managed relationships with wireless carriers in Europe, Asia and Americas. Devkumar was also responsible for developing relationship with OEMs such as Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Openwave, LogicaCMG, Comverse, Teleca, TWIi UK, and other partners.

Prior to this, since 2003, Devkumar has been marketing Nexage products and services to wireless operators in India, where he spent more than 2 years developing relationship with Hutch Orange, Reliance, BPL, Airtel, MTNL and Idea Cellular. Devkumar has been an adviser to MD of Tata Infotech and wireless operator Tata Teleservcies.

Prior to founding and managing NEXAGE, Devkumar was responsible for Technology development for Nextel Communications. Of the 7 years Devkumar spent at Nextel, last 4 years were with Nextel International as Director of Technology Strategy, where he was responsible for worldwide Engineering and Operations. He was responsible for establishing Nextel’s operations in China, Philippines, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and commercial launch of Nextel’s iDEN networks in Brazil and Argentina. Prior to Nextel, Devkumar was responsible for Software development for Teradyne, Inc. for 5 years.

Devkumar has Master of Science in Computer Science from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Master of Business Administration in Management from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California and Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Karnatak University in India.

Dave Smiddy
Director of Content and Carriers
ThinMultimedia

Dave Smiddy is Director, Content and Carriers at Thin Multimedia Inc., (TMI) a leading software and solutions provider for the mobile media industry. At TMI, he is responsible for the company’s platform business including sales, marketing and product development. Prior to TMI, Smiddy held business development and technical roles at Kodak Mobile, McKesson Corporation and Charles Schwab & Company. He has launched and contributed to consumer and enterprise mobile applications in North America, Latin America, Europe and East Asia. Smiddy began his career at Sybase, where he was Sr. Telecom Engineer. He graduated from University of California at Berkeley with a BA in Japanese History.

Sri L. Palasamudram
CEO
mobiDEOS
Sri L. Palasamudram worked at VoiceWeb, geoTouch, Netyear, and Autodesk in the past. He made deals with Sprint/Nextel, Telus, Boost, Hearst, Ask, CNBC, Sony, Fox and other studios. He was vice president of VoiceWeb which was sold by Netyear (JV between GE and Dentsu). He was a CEO of geoTouch and he raised $8M and brought from zero to over $1M revenues. geoTouch has the same business product as google maps in 1999. He has BS from Bangalore Uniersity and MS from Iowa State University.

Benjamin Feinman
Director of Product Management
MobiTV
Benjamin Feinman is Director of Product Management for MobiTV, where he is responsible for product strategy, product management, and the overall user experience for MobiTV. Prior to joining MobiTV, Benjamin was a Senior Product Manager on the QuickTime team at Apple Computer Inc, where he lead QuickTime's mobile product strategy and business development efforts. Prior to Apple, Benjamin was VP of Product Management at NBCi and Senior Evangelist at Netscape Communications Corp.

MobiTV, Inc. is the first mobile television and digital radio service provider for cellular, WiFi and broadband enabled devices worldwide. The MobiTV® service is available in the US through Sprint, Cingular, Alltel; in the United Kingdom through 3 and Orange UK; and to Canadian customers through Bell Canada, Rogers and TELUS Mobility; and other regional carriers around the world. The Emmy® Award winning service has more than one million paying subscribers and offers many popular TV channels from content providers such as MSNBC, ABC News Now, CNN, Fox News, Fox Sports, ESPN 3GTV, NBC Mobile, CNBC, The Discovery Channel, TLC, The Weather Channel, along with cartoons, music videos, comedy and more. Founded in 1999, MobiTV is a privately-held company headquartered in Emeryville, CA.

Greg Berkin
President & CEO
Think Digital
Greg served as Intel Corporation’s DVD Evangelist for 6 years, working with Hollywood studios, software developers and the computer industry to make DVD the most successful consumer electronics product of all time. In March of 2000, Greg was named one of the Top 20 Most Influential DVD Executives Worldwide.

In his technology roles, Greg was Manager of Intel Productions development including www.ArtMuseum.net, an Intel Corporation public website featuring high brand art exhibits including Van Gogh’s Van Goghs and NYC Whitney Museum’s The American Century Exhibit. Greg managed the engineering and development of twenty million dollar advanced multimedia website design, and implementation. His responsibilities included vertical market segment development, optimized-for-Pentium processor application software development, marketing and evangelism.

As a featured speaker for new Intel & industry technologies and an outspoken advocate of scalable, high-end application software for Intel architecture-based PCs. Host and/or chair for four Intel DVD PlugFest’s, author of various industry DVD interactivity whitepapers, architect of a DVD media application taxonomy, and author of several DVD-ROM discs. One of the leading industry proponents of DVD-ROM compatibility and interoperability on PCs. Greg is co-writer, director, producer and star of Act of Magic, an independent feature film, based on an old O’Henry short story, Ransom of Redchief. Greg founded Think Productions, a film and video production studio in New York shooting industrial films, music videos commercials and television pilots including The Antiques Roadshow, a popular PBS show. Greg was Director of Products for Paragraph International, Inc. a subsidiary of Silicon Graphics. Before that, Greg served as Marketing Manager for Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC), a Stanford Research concern. Greg founded Think Educational Software, Inc., the first Apple developer and publisher of award-winning Macintosh educational software. As a supporter of the arts, Greg is a private investor in Broadway plays and musicals, including Art, Rent, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Laramie Project, The Last Five Years and many more.

Greg earned his MBA with Duke University, sponsored by Intel Corporation and a BS in Computer Science from Potsdam College in upstate New York.

Yongyong Xu
CTO
Mobileplay

Yongyong Xu, CTO. YongYong, who has spent the last 10 years architecting software for mobile devices, has more than 16 U.S. and International patents or patents-pending to his credit, many of them for wireless software innovations. He most recently served as CTO of Antero Communications and prior to that was Technical Lead at Motorola, designing next generation phone platforms. YongYong studied computer science at Beijing University, and received his ME from Western Michigan University.

Mobileplay is a pioneering advertising network for mobile content, ideally poised to take advantage of the explosive growth in mobile marketing. Its fast-growing, wide-ranging network includes news, games, applications, web content and location-based services for PDAs, smartphones, BlackBerries and Java-enabled phones.

Writer-Director-Marketer, Mr. Tatsuno is a seasoned businessman with over 30 years of experience in the high-tech and urban planning industries. Trained in novel writing, he began his video career by advising a student on a video class assignment, which won the 1980 PBS Documentary of the Year Award for Survivors about California survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. During Japan’s heyday in the 1980s, he wrote two business books on Japan, The Technopolis Strategy and Created in Japan, which were optioned, respectively, by Central Independent Television plc of London for Japan Dreaming (1991) and Alvin Perlmutter Inc. of New York for The Creative Spirit 4-hour PBS series (1992).

Since 1991, Mr. Tatsuno has written eight screenplays, one of which is in production (The Last Millennium as co-writer), and is currently writing two screenplays slated for independent production. He is an active member of Cinemar (www.cinemarfilm.org), an independent filmmaking group in Santa Cruz, California.

In the high-tech industry, Mr. Tatsuno has advised over 700 companies in the U.S., Japan, Asia and Europe while working as a senior analyst at leading market researcher Dataquest/Gartner Group (1982-1989) and his own consulting firm, Dreamscape Global (1989-present). A visionary thinker, Silicon Valley business strategist, and thought leader, Mr. Tatsuno was involved with the early stages of the “Intel Inside” marketing campaign, Nokia’s global strategy planning, AMD’s breakthrough sub-$1000 PC, and Canon’s networked equipment strategy. His strength is helping companies develop breakthrough strategies. Currently, he is writing two books on RFID (radio frequency ID) and wireless network technologies, as well as advising China IP (intellectual property), business simulator, and online travel booking startups.

Mr. Tatsuno has studied in France and Germany, worked in Caracas, Venezuela and Japan, and traveled on business to Japan, Asia and Europe. He speaks and reads Japanese, Spanish and French. His current activities can be found at www.ryze.com/go/tatsuno