mobiTV
Based: Emeryville, CA
Founded: 1999
www.mobitv.com
Why It's Fierce: Mobile TV is taking the industry by storm in 2006, but three guys in Berkeley, CA, came up with this then unheard of notion back in 2003, betting that Americans loved TV enough to watch it on tiny screens. Fast forward to today, and MobiTV supports more than 1 million paying customers through deals with major carriers Sprint Nextel and Cingular in the U.S., 3 and Orange in the U.K., Canada's Bell Canada, TELUS Mobility and Rogers, and a host of regional operators throughout the world. Content ranges from news channels such as MSNBC, ABC News and Fox to cartoons, music videos and comedy. Last year, Sprint and MobiTV--the first companies to put live mobile TV in the hands of customers--won a special Emmy award for their efforts. MobiTV certainly isn't standing still. It has expanded MobiTV services for WiFi devices and networks, introduced a better version of its mobile TV technology, launched MobiRadio, which offers satellite music channels on a separate subscription, and announced support for a host of mobile TV and cellular technologies.
What to look for: MobiTV has a head start and know-how to efficiently run a global TV network, but stiff competition from companies with lots of R&D is coming into the mobile TV market. Look for MobiTV to aggressively grow its business and defend its turf from competitors by adding new revenue streams such as advertising. The news programming it offers is the primary motivator for sign-ups, but competition should dictate bigger content deals with prime-time networks.
