Mobisodes

Rajesh Jain picks this item up from The New York Times that "media companies have begun experimenting with broadcasting original programming made specifically for mobile phones to increase awareness of their television shows and movies."

But the time is not too far for creating quality "television like" programs for mobile phones.

I am too pained with the content currently available on high end mobile phones in India. They are just too boring. Hutch started showing cricket clips. For the hopelessly one-sided ICC-XI v Australian XI matches, almost all networks in India showed the cricket clips. The clips were lower quality, grainy and simply not up to the mark - primarily because of the low bandwidth available.

But the price was cheap. Rs. 50 for the entire series (3 ODIs + 1 Test). Add to that, the monthly sign-on charges and download charges per kilobyte.

But beyond that, there is nothing useful out there in India! I consider the Indian mobile phone companies predominantly ... shall we say, intellectually challenged? There is very little innovation happening there, driven by them. All they want is their pound of flesh - sometimes as much as 75% of the total revenues generated, leaving the content developer to split the rest with some possible intermediary or infrastructure provider.

Most Indian FMCGs seem to think of jumping into a deal with mobile2win or some such mobile marketing companies. What exactly they are marketing is unclear to me. I would hate to receive any marketing message from companies, before I start receiving subsidised quality content on my mobile phones.

As a content developer, I am thinking of a few ideas and will have some worthwhile content to show over the coming year...