Mobile video ‘gets interesting’

RCR Wireless News: Mark Donovan, senior analyst at M:Metrics Inc. reports that "mobile video is penetrating the market at a rate of 4%, indicating 9.2 million people watched some type of mobile video in the United States in November 2007. And that number represents a 60% increase over January 2007".

Video has long been “hampered with really poor quality,” but the adoption and buildout of 3G networks has improved quality tremendously".

Approximately 4 million wireless subscribers are watching programmed video on their mobile device, 3 million consumers are watching on-demand video and at least 1.7 million subscribers are watching broadcast services, Donovan said.

Still, real growth is in the offing. “Most people in the United States still haven’t seen or experienced someone watching video on their phone,” Donovan said. “To the extent that advertising can become a subsidizing mechanism here, we’ll see this market grow.”

According to M:Metrics’ data, the top 10 mobile video and TV genres (ranked highest to lowest) are movie trailers, music videos, sports action or news, comedy, weather, entertainment or celebrity news, news, full-length television or film, TV highlights and animation or cartoons.

This can bode well for numeric domains. As more people take advantage of these types of services, more easy to use domains will be required to facilitate easy access.