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January 11, 2006
Idea Day - Podcasting
Tuesday night I had the pleasure of attendeding the February IdeaDay. Idea Day is a monthly meeting somewhat like Seattle Mobile or Mobile Monday only for "creative" types. This month's topic was Podcasting; the speakers were Matt May of Blue Flavor and Alex Williams. I've been downloading podcasts for a while, even onto my mobile phones, but it is amazing to see what is happening to the media world. The era of the mass produced - shotgun to the entire audience media is begining to end. It is also amazing to see all of the creative things that are going on right now with podcasting, video podcasting, and targeted media.
The one thing that really struck me though is that here we have all these web 2.0 people who by and large are really smart and know what they are talking about; and they are talking about the video iPod. No-one is talking about mobile. Sure iPods are amazingly succsessful, and beautiful, I love mine. But, there have only been like 10 million iPods ever sold. There were 810 million mobile handsets sold globally in 2005. Mobile phones are now the largest consumer electronics category.
I am thinking that with the carriers opening up, Google adding it's influence into the mobile space, and the recent and ongoing improvements in network speed and handset functionality, that we are going to start to see Web 2.0, Podcast, Video Podcasts and blog start to collide with the mobile world in a big way in 2006.
Correction: Looks like the total number of iPods ever sold is 40+ Million ipods. Still, that's just ~10 Million more than the number of Chinese who get their weather by SMS on their mobile phones.
Posted by David Adams at January 11, 2006 03:16 PM
Comments
Not to nitpick, but... Apple announced at MacWorld that they've sold a total of over 40 million iPods. And I think over half of those were in 2005.
Sure, that's still nothing compared to mobile phones.
Right now it seems like most of the MP3 player phones are too expensive, I see a phone as something I replace 15 months - so I go for cheaper ones. I'm hoping my MP3 player purchases are good for a few years.
Posted by: James Hillyerd at January 13, 2006 03:40 PM
You are correct James. That 10 miliion number must be last years number. I've posted a correction.
Don't just think about MP3's either. MPEG is what we are really talking about. iPod video, Tivo, Multimedia PC's, and mobile phones with video players + much faster (EV-DO, HSPDA) mobile network. Video podcasting/mobilecasting is coming.
As for general music listening, I agree with you. But for timely information (like podcasts) that I want to download, use and dispose of, the mobile phone is perfect. It's always with me and always connected.
-David
Posted by: David Adams at January 14, 2006 11:27 AM