Julie Ask Quotations

It's a great time for content providers to experiment with a mobile play.

The big challenge is inventory. Not a lot of people watch this, so how do you get a big enough market that makes it worth your while?

Certainly the notion of putting music video on phones will increase over time.

The potential for local search and local advertising comes into play.

We haven't seen anything that looks and feel like an Apple product yet.

Five percent of mobile subscribers will use video.

Parents get mobile phones for their teens because they want to communicate in case of an emergency, and wireless carriers have made it easy to add users to their existing plans. Wireless carriers have been very successful in getting parents to expand their plans to include their teens, but between free phones and shared minutes, it's not the most lucrative proposition for carriers.

I have been fielding quite a few calls about Apple's filing of the 'Mobile Me' patent. Folks have been speculating about a phone from Apple for more than a year. Being that I am a wireless analyst, I don't follow Apple as closely as others do. What I do know though, is that we are not likely to know until Apple wants us to know. They are pretty good at big surprises. Do I think they are developing a phone? Probably. Probably somewhere in their labs, there are prototypes of phones. Whether or not they bring one to market commercially is another story. Whether or not they will do so on their own is another open question. Hard to imagine carrier subsidies on a device unless there are revenues to be earned through downloaded services and content.

Apple sells hardware and software. They don't have an existing subscriber base like cable companies, and they don't have content like ESPN that people have an affinity to.

This is going to be an exciting space for the next couple years.