The proliferation of Web-based video has not skipped the mobile space. As a matter of fact, most of the browsing on cellular networks targets Web destinations rather than the mobile portal.
Such destinations are happy with the new situation, and even offer mobile portals, yet they face challenges they have not encountered in the Web-only arena.
Mobile operators, on the other hand, are involved in an uphill battle to maintain their ARPU. With traffic flowing away from their portals to the open Internet, operators are seeking ways to add value to their content flow. Leveraging their intimate relations with the end-user and the network, opportunities to add value are there. So are some serious issues.
Web video destinations, mobile operators and system and application vendors face some significant challenges on the way to revenue-generating services:
- On-demand transcoding and resizing of long-tail video content to the variety of handsets
- Exhausting ingest of big head content to all handsets
- Adaptive bit-rate modifications to fit the "breathing" cellular network (for Web entities, without being part of the network)
- Monetizing the video using individually-tailored real-time enrichment
- Ensured QoE
- Affordable transmission cost
- Reasonable service CapEx and OpEx
