I wrote about Orb back in April after CTIA, so it was good to catch up with Ian McCarthy, Orb’s VP, Product Marketing today.
If you don’t remember the original post, Orb make a free app that sits on your PC that then enables you to stream anything you have on it to your mobile. This could be TV (if you have a tuner), audio or files. Think Slingbow without the box and the $249.99 price, plus the $29.99 mobile software. Or as I wrote back then:
For me though, the Orb solution is simply way superior. You don’t need hardware, it’s free (or significantly cheaper if you need to buy a Tuner) and by hooking up my mobile with my computer, as opposed to my computer/mobile with my TV, offers far more potential uses.
The big news in Orb’s world and strategically significant for all of us mobile watchers is their deal with Vodafone Germany, called Mein PC (or My PC, if you need the translation!). I think it’s fair to say that Vodafone are nearer the walled garden model than many and this deal is important as they’d just knocked a very big hole in the wall, albeit not demolished it entirely quite yet. It’s a tacit agreement that they aren’t best placed to decide what content that the user sees on the mobile - the user is.
Of course, the big issue of Data Pillage still exists, where the user is faced with an unfeasibly large bill if they start using services like Orb regularly. But looking at this optimistically, if the trial is successful, it’s going to be the driver for some all-you-can-eat data plans which we’re crying out for in Europe. In the US, where operators are slightly more enlightened about data, some users are Orbing for 45 minute sessions 3 times a week, which clearly points to a latent demand for this kind of thing.
The other interesting piece of news for me was that YouTube could now be Orbed to your phone. An awful lot of YouTube content is generated by video phones, so this closes the loop and lets the phone become both creator and consumer of mobile content. If this takes off it’ll be bad news for the likes if SeeMeTV, as you just won’t need that channel any more and certainly won’t need to pay 50p to upload your video, unless you’re convinced that thousands will download it, earning you 1p at a time.
Finally, much of the focus of these types of services is on TV and certainly Orb has the potential to be truly disruptive in this market. But as I’ve been saying for a long time, I think the perfect marriage for mobile is actually audio - or radio, in the loosest possible use of the term. Mobile is all about movement and while TV is good sometimes, it’ll make you bump into a lot of lamposts when you’re walking down the street.
Mobile, then, could presage the Golden Age for radio and certainly the ability to stream music straight from your PC to your phone to create your own personal radio station is here now. But it also opens up the niche of user generated content radio, or Podcasts, to the true mass market of all of us who own a PC and a mobile.
This creates many opportunities. Producing our own “newspaper” has proven incredibly powerful, as blogs have shown. Now the opportunity to creating your own radio station exists and more importantly, the means to broadcast it to a mass market audience.
Watch this space.
Orb is fun and everything, but don’t you find it annoying that you can only get stuff when your PC is switched on?
I really like the rate adaptation thing — but wouldn’t it work better if you could access online storage?
Hi Russell, could you eloborate a bit more on ‘YouTube could now be Orbed to your phone’ part? Is it coming or already possible? Thanks.
I think this is a really exciting development. I already use logmein to reach my home computer remotely whilst away which means I can access all my files whenever I need them. Yes, it does mean keeping my computer and broadband connection on at home at all times, but that’s ok. I’m getting used to that now. So it’s not a huge leap to use something like Orb to get it all on my mobile too. Sounds like it’s a great thing.
Admittedly, I’m ahead of the curve vs the general consumer for things like this, but I’m not the earliest of eary adopters either. If it is as easy to use as something like logmein then it will become a no-brainer in a year or two.
It does beg the question of how the economics of content will pan out and what effect that will have on the quality of content available.
hey everyone - ian from orb here
thx for the great shout-out, russell. i too think that radio - in the sense of through-the-aether access to audio content - is due for a resurgance, and not in the restricted, if interesting, ways XM and Sirius propose (i remember being mightily disappointed when i learned that the delphi devices for XM wouldn’t let me get my favorite internet radio stations - Orb, on the other hand, streams my fave internet radio to my everyday nokia phone’s realplayer)
jukka - this capability re youtube is indeed live today. you’ll need to have or to install the opensource ffdshow codec (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow) on your orb PC, and then you simply add the URL of the youtube videos to your Custom Channels in Orb TV
technokitten - your own take on the always-on-PC question is the same as my own; i think that when folks have a REASON to take continuous advantage of their broadband capacity (skype, orb, etc.), they do; no one does it just because they can - it’s all about being jacked-in to an ongoing activity (communication in skype’s case, content access and photo/video-stream sharing in orb’s)
Don’t get me wrong, I like Orb, and, as far as I know, it uses some great technology.
I spoke to one of the early investors sometime ago, who put me on to it. This investor has a great track record in networking equipment… but basically said this kind of thing (Orb) that starts to use the power of networks is the way forward. Fair enough, I see that.
And I do like being able to get to my music and photo collections from my phone. Good one.
But I believe you’re underestimating the usability aspect of having to leave your PC running.
For one thing, what if your stuff is on a laptop that’s in your bag, just at the moment you want to access it (i.e when you’re out)? For another, people like to turn their PCs off when they’re not using them… err, especially when they’re out or away. The problem is similar to those services that relay Skype calls to your mobile via your PC– yes it’s kind of cool, but it is also geeky and somewhat a hassle.
Here’s another perspective. I work for a mid-sized FTSE 250 company based in London. We currently have an energy efficiency drive throughout the building. This means turning off computers, monitors, printers, drinks machines, when they’re not in use. Take the stairs not the elevator, etc. Lots of UK firms are have similar initiatives.
After all that, it feels wrong to leave a PC on 24/7 in case I might like the radio.
Ian from Orb, you guys must have a plan (or partner) to use your tech/platform in a way that doen’t require the end-user to have a PC turned on. Care to share?
[...] Robert Wiedemann of Vodafone, taking about Orb’s Mein PC, that I wrote about a few weeks ago. [...]