First up: during the Q&A, when Lloyd Mathias, Director Marketing-India for Motorola India was asked about Motorola’s plans for terrestrial broadcasting, much like the Doordarshan DVB-H launch with Nokia. Mathias confirmed that Motorola is talking with broadcasters in India for a pilot project. As of today, only the public broadcaster DD has a license for terrestrial broadcasts.
During his presentation, Mathias spoke about how Motorola India has had to convince the parent company about special needs of the Indian market – for larger phonebooks, high ambient sound, lower recharge times, heat and dust. They’ll be launching more applications: the Rockr incorporates a webcam, news on the move (Screen 3) in collaboration with local TV channels, and a song recognition device for identification. They’re also loading games that are popular in India, and even a vastu application for their phones.
Sunil Dutt, Director Sales and Marketing Asia for Nokia spoke on social media trends and digitization of media. He feels that people are at the center of these experiences, and the mobile industry is best poised to deliver convergence. Consumers would like mobile blogs, making movies using the mobile, listen to music – it’s all about consumer experience.
Akshay Agarwal, Ecosystem Partner Manager, Texas Instruments spoke about interactivity in mobile content – if a dress is shown on Mobile TV, the operator could offer the viewer a dress for purchase, based on user preferences. There’s also the opportunity for mobile Personal Video Recorder and Picture-In-Picture (Edit: I wonder how PIP will work in such a small mobile screen…). The challenge is for battery life.
During the Q&A, questions were raised about Mobile TV and issues of broadcast when it switches to a wireless mode with 3G and Wifi – but Pankaj Mohindroo, President of the Indian Cellular Association who was moderating the session, deferred these issues till later, saying that we can have a whole conference around this
Responding to my question on whether Nokia’s adopting a content aggregator role, Dutt said that consumers are looking for everything on a handset – movies, music and gaming on the go. Devices and manufacturers will attempt to address that aspect and more and more devices will now have content.