Motorola offers full-length movies for mobile

Motorola has introduced full-length films to watch on its mobile handsets. The 40 titles available include The Italian Job, Star Trek and Team America: World Police to UK customers.

 

This is the first time that full-length films have been tailored for mobile and is through a deal with Paramount Digital Entertainment. They cost between £5.99 (€7.56) and £8.99 (€11.36) per title, download them to a computer hard disc and then copy them to their phones.

 

While Motorola claims that sideloading the films - that is downloading them via broadband onto a PC and then transferring them onto the phones - saves them money, it's a cumbersome process and a potential inhibitor. Most music is sideloaded, but there is a huge differerence between the amount of time needed to move songs and a full-length film.

 

The second big question is whether there is a market. Do people want to watch a whole film on a small screen instead of their PC or TV or laptop‾

 

Andrew Till, a director on Motorola's multimedia team, was quoted in The Guardian newspaper saying, "People see video on a mobile in a different way. They want something they can watch while they are on the treadmill, on an exercise bike or while they are commuting when they don't want a large device. We know from the video consumption on phones that consumers want this.'

 

He added users typically watch films in chunks of between 22 and 26 minutes and that content would eventually be available scene by scene, as they already are on DVDs.

 

Motorola's launch follows the introduction of movie downloads to the UK iTunes store last week and the phone maker says its film download offer will be extended to France, Spain, Germany and Italy.