SPB Software reportedly announced that it has debuted SPB TV for Android (News - Alert) phones, which is a paid application that delivers free publicly available digital channels from all over the world via an IP TV format direct to smart phones with Android platform.
"After porting SPB TV to a new platform other than Windows Mobile we got a favourable reception from the mobile market, especially from mobile operators," said Sebastian-Justus Schmidt, CEO for SPB Software, in a statement. “Now, SPB is very pleased with the fact that we can offer mobile carriers an equal solution, a unique powerful application for Windows Mobile, Symbian (News - Alert) and Android platforms."
Officials at the company said that the application is pending patent approval, available for $9.95 only, and has features such as picture in picture and simple. Transparent graphic user interfaces for volume, brightness and channel surfing.
The company said that with this latest software release it now covers a fairly wide range of mobile platforms, which include Windows Mobile and Symbian, for delivering digital TV via IP TV. SPB TV reportedly has the following features: More than 100 international live TV channels in more than 20 languages, unique TV browser with quick channels preview and list of current and planned TV shows, integrated full week's TV guide, the ability to set calendar reminders for select TV shows; fast channel launching and switching technology, and full support of hardware buttons controls.
SPB Software said SPB TV 1.0 is available for smart phones with Android 1.5 and Half size Video Graphics Array screen resolutions, Windows phones with Windows Mobile 5 Professional and Standard editions and above, Symbian phones with S60 3d edition Feature Pack 1 or higher, and quarter, VGA, Square QVGA, and WVGA screen resolutions.
In June, the mobile TV industry reportedly received a boost when the US government decided to switch to digital TV from analog transmission. The immediate beneficiary of this was Qualcomm's (News - Alert) FLO TV network, which has already spent $500 million to buy spectrum that has been released. The company will now have the opportunity to broadcast its transmission in 100 major U.S. markets serving more than 250 million potential customers. According to industry researches, the market size for mobile TV may reach $10 billion by 2013 from $1.5 billion in 2008.
Advertisement in the mobile TV network is reportedly gaining huge market traction for the corporate world since each mobile device is connected to a specific viewer, and hence the scope for audience-specific advertisement is enormous in this industry.
"SPB was always concentrated on supporting phone manufactures and mobile network carriers in building innovative and user-centric products and services," Schmidt said.
SBP Software said that its latest app also has a freeware versions with limited features and channels, both the paid and free versions requires a rugged 3G or Wi-Fi network connection for proper streaming.
Pay TV on mobiles appear to be popular in Saudi Arabia since Dilithium reportedly announced that one of its products, the video value added services, delivers Live TV and Video on Demand to mobiles operating on the Third Generation of Mobile Networking (3G) for Mobily of Saudi Arabia. The single point of service content delivery is reached by pressing the digits 1488 on the mobile keypad. Menus appear on the mobile’s display and are intuitive for the subscriber to navigate the media on offer – primarily 21 TV channels, 14 diverse categories of VoD, and music ranging from Arabian to Pop.
A recent related report claimed that Infonetics expects 397 million mobile video phones to sell worldwide in 2013, creating a market worth tens of billions of dollars, and said that the Asia Pacific region should see the highest market response for mobile video phones. Correspondingly, the company predicts that there will be 410 million video subscribers by 2013 when compared with only 41 million registered users in 2008.
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Vivek Naik is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Vivek's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Amy Tierney
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