Ericsson Pushing Mobile Multimedia
The mobile industry is betting multimedia content will lure subscribers to upgrade to 2.5/3G service and handsets. Ericsson is working on two initiatives that could help mobile carriers woo consumers. First they have teamed up with Sony Music Germany to offer carriers a MMS-based music clip service. We should see more deals like this based on the Sony Ericsson jv. On the streaming media front, they are also expected to announce a partnership with RealNetworks to offer carriers Reals streaming content management system. To date, Real has been working mostly with Nokia. It’s unclear what the demand for these services will be. Most surveys claim people are somewhat ambivalent to 3G services in general and the ones that are interested are more keen on user created content, not packaged for-pay content.
