iHollywood News

Round Up: Vodafone and Yahoo; Doug Morris Dreams of New Deal with iPod; Studios Deal with BitTorrent

Vodafone Partners with Yahoo to Beef Up Mobile Advertising

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone carrier, has struck a deal with Yahoo to put ads on phones. The ads will vary in format from video spots to targeted text ads relevant to users' web searches.

The partnership will use Yahoo's sales force, and the ads will first appear on phones in England.

Doug Morris Dreams of Striking a Zune-Like Dollar-a-Device Deal with iPod

Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris said yesterday he might hit up Apple for the same royalty fee he gets from Zune. Universal gets roughly $1 for every Zune sold in exchange for licensing Microsoft its music.

Morris's next round of negotiations with iPod is scheduled for early next year.

Studios Make Friends with BitTorrent, an Old Foe

Fox, Paramount, Palm Pictures, MTV Networks and Lionsgate announced today that instead of suing the file-sharing service BitTorrent they're going to distribute content through its P2P network. The gutsiest of the bunch is Palm; the independent movie studio will distibute feature films on BitTorrent before they even hit theaters.

Before the announcement today, Warner Bros. was the only major studio to have such a BitTorrent deal.

In other BitTorrent news, the word on the web is that Bram Cohen, CEO and co-founder, is looking to leave the company.

For more details on these stories, see The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and BitTorrent.com.

Verizon Scores a YouTube Deal, But is YouTube What Young Subscribers Want?

Always On Network News

Verizon announced a deal today that gives it exclusive rights to offer YouTube on a mobile service. It's the first big wireless distribution deal Google's inked for YouTube since acquiring the site.

Verizon customers will be able to access a mobile version of YouTube next month.

The partnership gives Verizon a definitive advantage over its rivals--Cingular, the rural telcos--in mobile entertainment. But the results of a new survey by Forrester Research, announced today, raise questions about how much coveted young subscribers care about watching TV on their mobiles.

Forrester found that American 12-21 year olds value phone service quality and price over newer, fancier features. While a small minority of those polled said they had the money and inclination to use a mobile phone to consume entertainment content, the vast majority wanted to use their mobile phones exclusively for texting and talking.

Some day some service provider will pull ahead of the competition by offering better entertainment. But the YouTube deal may come too early to help Verizon steal customers away from Cingular.

For more details, see the Wall Street Journal story.

By,

Michael Stroud
Columnist, Always On Network

Call for Speakers Update

Please note the following events currently have an active 'call for speakers'.

If you are interested to submit to speak simply fill out our application here
In addition you may mail your bio, company info, event you are interested in and 2-3 panels to
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Active Events:
1)iHollywood Asia Pacific Jan 14, Hawaii  (deadline Nov. 30)
2) iHollywood Europe, Feb 14, Barcelona, Spain  (deadline Jan. 14)
3) Music 2.0, LA

Mobile TV at iHollywood Europe

Mobile TV - Sports and Europe

iHollywood Europe is shaping up nicely with strong interest from Hollywood in Mobile TV and content.

With the event taking place at  one of Europe's most famous Stadium's and championship team FC Barcelona, sports is likely to have a strong role at the event.

If your company is involved in mobile content delivery involving sports, we are currently booking speakers. email david@ihollywoodforum.com

US Pushes China on Piracy, Opening to Entertainment from US

In Beijing today Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez argued on Chinese media that the Chinese ought open up trade with American entertainment companies and crack down on pirates if they don't want to see a protectionist reaction against China in the United States.

"They point to the lack of robust IP protection in China as a top reason," he said, referring to American protectionists. He called the Chinese market "a haven for pirates."

Fore more details, see the Associated Press story.

Yahoo! to Put Ads on Vodafone Handsets

Yahoo! and UK mobile phone service provider Vodafone announced a deal today in which Yahoo! will sell advertisers display time on Vodafone's mobiles starting early next year. Vodafone customers who agree to watch a certain amount of targeted ads will get a discount on their service.

The companies will incorporate ads into games, video, picture messaging and any other possible format they'll fit in, then split the revenue. What Yahoo! brings to the table is a sales force and display ad technology.

For more details, see the press release.

iPod's Aerial Assault on Zune

Today, the day Microsoft's Zune hits the stores, Apple announced deals with six airlines to let passengers hook their iPods into in-flight entertainment systems.

Delta, Continental, United and Air France, among others, will enable passengers to hook their iPods up to seat-back monitors starting around the middle of next year. Apple already has deals in place to put iPod hook-ups in upcoming Ford, Mazda, and GM cars.

Microsoft, meanwhile, presented the Zune as a more social alternative to the iPod because it lets users to wirelessly transmit songs between their devices. In a gesture reminiscent of an Oprah giveaway, Bill Gates handed over his own Zune to a member of the audience at a promotional event.

--Benjamin Nugent

TiVo's User-Generated Content Play

Today TiVo announced a new service that lets viewers create an Internet "channel" on their television which will consist of their home movies, and lets friends and family watch that channel on their own sets, if they have TiVo boxes. 

TiVo has also teamed up with One True Media, a web service that helps amateurs edit their footage. Early next year, TiVo customers will be able to use the service to create online channels other TiVo members can watch.

Third, TiVo will team up with ICM to hire celebrity "guru guides" to suggest movies, TV shows and web videos that users can download from the Internet via TiVo's Internet-to-TV service, TiVoCast.

More to come...

But for now, read the Wall Street Journal story for more details.

New Survey Suggests Rapid Increase in Mobile Music Purchases

A new survey conducted by the UK youth communciations trendspotting firm Dubit, and heavily touted by the English mobile content service company 3UK, says that in England twice as many people are buying music through mobile devices as they were a year ago. It speculates that the number of songs purchased on handsets could be greater than the number purchased on PCs five years from now.

One of the unpredictable consequences, Dubit's survey suggested, was a revival in the importance of the music video. Music videos previously hit their peak popularity in the 80s and 90s, when they formed the bulk of the programming on MTV. MTV has since largely thrown them over in favor of reality shows, but the survey argued they're popular diversions for mobile-users looking to fill up downtime in transit; 68% of respondents said they'd rather buy a video download than an audio download if they were the same price. 3UK adds that its sold 20 million video downloads in the past couple years.

For more details, read the press release, which links to the whole survey, here.

Morgan Stanley Offers Internship to the Applicant with the Best Video

Morgan Stanley's teamed up with Sony Pictures to create a promotional contest in which ambitious youths compete for Morgan Stanley internships by submitting videos about themselves.

Contestants submit the videos to Grouper, the video-sharing site owned by Sony. Sony came to Morgan Stanley with the idea in order to market its upcoming Will Smith vehicle, The Pursuit of Happyness. The lynchpin for all the cross-promotion is the film's plot: it's based on the inspirational tale of an intern at Dean Witter, a firm now owned by Morgan Stanley.