Eirik Stephansen, sales manager for video telephony and messaging at Ericsson, says: "Video telephony is just beginning, and we have yet to see everything that service providers can do with it. What we see right now are two broad categories of video telephony services: person-to-person (P2P) video and person-to-content (P2C)."
P2P involves mobile-video conferencing and messaging; mobile-video conferencing ranges from mobile-to-mobile or mobile-to-PC video chatting to multi-person conference calls; and video messages can be left and delivered in a similar way as voice messages when the called party is not available. P2C includes live streams of shows and events, such as the news or sporting events, or delayed streams of content such as last week's episode of a favorite show or highlights of an event.
"Either way," says Stephansen, "we are seeing new ways to present content and use video telephony to meet consumers' needs. We are even seeing P2P and P2C merge, with the introduction of personal avatars." An avatar is a simple picture or animated character that represents the consumer.
In Hong Kong, for example, Smartone offers a service where the consumer can replace his or her video image with an avatar whose mood can be controlled by the terminal keypad. "The avatar offers the consumer an easy way to use video without showing his or her face. It lowers the threshold for consumers to start using video."
Dating services are also taking advantage of video telephony's convenience and capabilities. Participants can leave video messages of themselves for prospective dates; if interested, the prospective dates can make video calls in return.
Even watching TV becomes a richer experience: mobile TV unshackles the consumer from the TV set and can offer interactive capabilities.
The Taiwanese operator FarEasTone offers mobile TV services where consumers can switch channels by pressing the keypad number for the "station" or stream they want. Ericsson`s Channel Selector is a client software that makes it possible for the end-user to zap between mobile TV programs. It makes watching more attractive and easy as it resembles how channels are switched on traditional TV.
Stephansen says: "This is an easy-to-use service that can easily be enriched through interactivity. For example, a contest show such as Pop Idol could incorporate interactive voting into its mobile-TV stream, letting viewers react instantly to what is happening on stage.
"These are just some of the inventive ways that service providers are using our video-telephony platform to enrich consumers' communication experiences. Market research shows that consumers want mobile-video services, and, as a pioneer in mobile-video telephony, Ericsson offers a comprehensive solution so operators can provide the services their customers crave."
