Usability issues are of paramount importance in Mobile Podcasting. Prior experience proves that the early adopters may occasionally pull content, but the mass-market will not. Rather, it appears that the subscription push model may be most suitable, both in terms of user experience and network utilization.
The cellular industry has repeatedly attempted to port popular consumer services to the mobile environment. Internet became Mobile Internet. Television became Mobile TV. Despite the investment of billions of dollars in data networks, spectrum, devices, and marketing campaigns, very few services have ported successfully.
Yet digital music and podcasting prove that users will go to great lengths to mobilize entertainment, including actively connecting a media device to a PC and transferring to it content downloaded from the internet. But can podcasting become a service enjoyed on mobile phones? Clearly, podcasting has certain attributes which make it suitable for the mobile environment. First, it is an “on-the-go” experience. Second, enjoying audio content is not effected by the handset’s small display screen. In fact, given the prevalence of mobile phones, and the ability to deliver content directly to the handset without any user action required, the mobile industry might have difficulty explaining a porting failure. Indeed, one may argue that such a failure should challenge the concept of phones as media devices, and convergence. This article outlines a few of the critical issues that must be addressed if podcasting is to see even minimal mass-market penetration. First, what are some of the inherent “mobile-environment” constraints and how will they impact and define the service? Second, is there a user-willingness to pay for, and operator desire to launch, such mobile podcast services?
The manner in which mobile users discover and receive content will have a huge impact on the nature of the service. There are two alternative models: network-based solutions, and client-based solutions. Network-based solutions offer users access to podcast menus on the Operator’s WAP Portal. Users, locate the appropriate podcast, then initiate a download or stream of the podcast in real-time.
Network-oriented delivery models have failed to appeal to the mass-market user. The click and wait, menu-intense experience of Mobile Internet has proven unappealing. It is doubtful whether posting podcast files on a Portal will be an effective way of increasing awareness and usage of the service. First, a podcast service offering a growing number of podcasts implies a catalogue-intense user-experience, forcing the user to browse through several WAP pages before finding a podcast of interest. Furthermore, given the relatively large size of a podcast file, adding a lengthy download wait to a cumbersome Portal experience will kill the experience all together
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