NTT DoCoMo has announced a new video messaging service that eschews MMS to use the video call function of its 3G phones. It’s essentially video voicemail — users initiate a video call (as best I can tell, anyway) to a particular number, then record a message of up to three minutes, which gets left in the recipient’s video voicemail. I’d assume that it then gets checked like any normal voicemail, only with a video call. Like using video shortcodes to deliver content, this makes a lot more sense than using MMS for short video messages in many instances. There’s zero set-up, there’s no wait for uploads or downloads.
Video calling has, um, failed to set the world alight. Operators were so convinced that person-to-person video calls would drive demand for 3G, but interest in the feature has failed to materialize, and real-world uses are few and far between. There’s essentially no demand for live, two-way video calls; however, there are times where people want to send videos — and using the video calling mechanism for content delivery could be a better solution. Forget video calling as a replacement for standard voice calls; perhaps its future is in content delivery.
[tags]mobile, 3g, video calling[/tags]
Submitting videos from mobile phones is just starting to take off, and given a reasonable fee could become much used by bloggers and socnetters.
From a pure multimedia perspective the mobile phone is the only device that combines multimedia recording and transmission in the same box. Sure, there are cameras/camcorders with WLAN, but considering what you snap or record is likely not in the proximity of a WLAN hot spot, it can’t really compare. With a phone you can also easier text tag the photo or video.
“Video calling has, um, failed to set the world alight.”
I fear OMA PoC will take the same route.
[...] There seems to be a wave of new releases among social networks, putting together yet another serious attempt at positioning competitiveness along the mobile axis. Treemo launched a well built mobile-focused social network. I tried Treemo and it works well, if you excuse the delivery of Video clips to mobile devices via MMS vs. via streaming. I personally don’t find a 6 second truncated video clip very entertaining, and I am still looking for the streaming options to be supported. Right now, the major holdback is with operators open infrastructure, or lack there of, but the evidence from DocoMo, Japan clearly supports this direction. [...]
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