Cut the Wires

As I mentioned in the previous post, the mobile media marketplace holds great potential for increasing media consumption in every form, including music, video, and broadcast. The technology for a constantly accessible wireless marketplace already exists, but our Portable Media Players (PMP) don't utilize this technology yet.

Wireless technology, with the exception of Microsoft's Zune, has not yet been fully implemented into our PMP. The lack of wireless connectivity in the PMP greatly hinders the opportunity for successful mobile media marketplace. For the sake of this article I will be using Apple's iPod as the example, since it is the leading PMP, and constantly drives change in this area of technology. In the near future it is likely that we will see technologies like Wireless USB and WiFI or WiMAX chips built right into PMP like the iPod. Evidence of these and similar technologies are already showing up in Apple patents related to the iPhone, but because of current DRM restrictions, these wireless technologies will not focus primarily on the sharing of media, but more on the consumption of media in our day to day lives.

In my MUIN 495 class this week, we discussed the possibility of giving consumers to purchase additional media with day to day purchases at places like Starbucks, McDonald's, or any other routinely visited business. For example, in addition to purchasing a latte in the morning, for $0.40 extra, I could purchase a podcast of my favorite morning show, or the highlights of last night's NBA games. These are only examples and as you probably know, the content offerings are infinite. This model seemed like a great idea to me, because people are more willing to spend a little more money when they are already purchasing something.

However, the logistics of people receiving their media without wireless capabilities, greatly inhibits this model from being successful. For the additional money being spent to be justified, the process of ordering and receiving the additional media has to be seamless, painless, and fast. Even though data transfer rates are very high within USB 2.0 and other connections, the plethora of proprietary inputs on PMP's makes it impractical for companies to invest in a certain PMP ecosystem and then alienate another one.

Wireless connectivity could bring the much needed interoperability into the PMP world, and allow for more companies to invest in ways to offer more content to more consumers. This seems like a win-win situation for business and consumers. More on this subject next week.