The race for innovative mobile media applications goes on, as investors try to identify the next big thing, and mobile giants try to build their content platforms. The latest move comes from telecoms magnate Carlos Slim, controller of Telmex and America Movil, who has injected $40m into music identification app Shazam.
The company, which has now raised a total of $72m since 2009, said it would use some of the funding to accelerate the creation of a TV element to its popular app. Last spring, it added to the functionality of its iOS offering, allowing users to identify enabled TV shows and adverts, and to access related content. It has since extended its iOS, Android and Windows apps to work with programming on over 160 US television channels.
“Shazam is defining a new category of media engagement that combines the power of mobile with traditional broadcast media and advertising,” Slim said in a statement to Reuters.
The software firm’s executive chairman, Andrew Fisher, said: “Within 18 months we expect TV will significantly outperform the music side [of the business] and that’s part of this investment.’
Slim will be well aware of the movement for telecoms players to look beyond traditional revenue streams and try to influence the next wave of the mobile and content experience, either through directly branded platforms or by creating offerings that work on many networks and devices.
Latin America, where his firms are engaged in a head-to-head with Telefonica across the region, is proving a major center of innovation by carriers, as seen in the Spanish group’s aggressive promotion of the upcoming Firefox Mobile platform. Cellcos still have considerable influence over consumers in this region, and the adoption of smartphones is relatively low so far, so there is still the opportunity to shape the mobile broadband experience rather than allowing Google and Apple to do it on their own.
Standards Watch:
Push-to-talk lives on as NII launches PRIP in the US
Push-to-talk, the application that made Nextel’s fortune, is outliving its greatest supporter. Nextel may have been acquired by Sprint, which recently shut down the iDEN network which supported PTT, and now Sprint is under the control of Softbank. But operators continue to see demand for the walkie talkie style service, even in the era of instant messaging.
Sprint offers a CDMA-based version of its old offering and AT&T recently launched its own app. Now NII Holdings, which operates Nextel-branded PTT services in Latin America, has launched an Android app that can enable peer-to-peer conversations between the US and other Nextel markets. It developed the app, called PRIP, with Motorola Mobility (Motorola was the vendor which developed iDEN and Push-to-Talk, though these were adopted by few carriers apart from Nextel and NII).
PRIP is now available for download from Google Play, providing US users with instant PTT connections to NII’s 11m subscribers in Mexico, Brazil and other countries, and to other PRIP users in the US.
“After the successful launch of PRIP in Mexico in April, we are pleased to roll out this service to users in the US,” said Greg Santoro, NIIs’ chief strategy and marketing officer. “With PRIP, NII and Motorola Mobility are expanding the ecosystem of PTT users and providing those affected by the recent iDEN shutdown in the US with an affordable and instant PTT alternative to stay in contact.’
The new app is expected to be available on the iPhone in the coming weeks. Unlimited PTT calls are available for $7.99 per month on Google Play.