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Wireless - Tuesday, March 27, 2007

CTIA: GoTV Raises $12M From Motorola and Qualcomm

Mobile video has been around since 2004 or thereabouts, but it hasn't taken off yet due to poor content and video quality and handset requirements. M:Metrics says that less than 1% of U.S. wireless subscribers watched video on their cellphones in January.

Still some VCs are bullish. LA's GoTV Networks has raised $12M in Series B funding from Motorola Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures, says VentureWire. The company previously had raised over $17M from Bessemer Venture Partners and Charles River Ventures. GoTV competes with MobiTV which did a $70M C round last July.

Both companies will see competition from Verizon which began selling its new VCast Mobile TV service in a handful of markets earlier this month. Unlike MobiTV and GoTV, which use carriers' data networks to stream video, Verizion uses a separate network owned and operated by Qualcomm that is optimized specifically for video. So it is interesting to see that Qualcomm has invested in GoTV and that Verizon runs GoTV.

Formerly known as V*Star, GoTV made-for-mobile TV programming is accessible via monthly subscription through Cingular, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, Helio, and Boost Mobile. GoTV creates 15 hours of original, made-for-mobile content each week, comprising about 18% of all content that they distribute.

Why we wonder create original content, why not just repurpose and would repurposing give the upper hand to Fox, NBC, Viacom, etc.? Amp'd Mobile President Bill Stone provides that answer, indicating that only 5% of all content available on his network is original, but it accounts for about 30% of all paid content. Furthermore, costs to create and develop original made-for-mobile content are only about $100K to $200K

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