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Strategic Insight into Mobile Content Adaptation Markets - Porting with Transcoding and Rendering
Frost & Sullivan, July 2006
The Frost & Sullivan research service entitled A Strategic Insight into Mobile Content Adaptation-Porting, Transcoding and Rendering provides insights into various techniques and technologies employed for mobile content adaptation and discusses different market trends and expected developments in the complex space. In this research service, Frost & Sullivans expert analysts thoroughly examine the following markets: mobile game porting and ringtones and graphics porting.
Market Sectors
Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research:
By Application:
- Mobile game porting
- Transcoding for ringtones and graphics
By Technology:
- J2ME and BREW development
- Transcoding servers
- Hosted porting solutions
- Application execution environments
Technologies
The following technologies are covered in this research:
- Porting: Porting refers to adapting the software code of an application to ensure optimum performance under different operating environments. Porting, in the context of mobile content, refers generally to executable mobile applications such as mobile games, or other mobile applications written for the mobile device.
- Transcoding: Transcoding generally refers to conversion of one media format to another for optimum end-user experience. Transcoding generally applies to mobile media products, and in this case, ringtones and graphics. Content transcoding is actually very different than application porting and both porting and transcoding may be required to achieve success in mobile content markets.
- Rendering: Rendering, in the context of mobile content refers to presenting the Web experience on mobile devices. Rendering may involve development and adaptation of Web pages for the optimum mobile experience.
- Quality Assurance: Quality assurance includes a series of testing and correction processes to ensure that applications have been developed or produced to meet the expected performance levels. Identifying faults and failures, and determining the correctness, completeness, security, and quality of the written code are the prime concerns. System testing, regression testing, white-box or black-box testing, and others could be some of the processes employed.
- Operator Certification: Operator certification is one of the last processes before actual content deployment. Mobile content needs to be ‘certified’ before being deployed on the network, and operators usually work with third-party certification providers that handle the certification process.
Market Overview
Satisfactory End-user Experience is Critical for the Growth of the Mobile Content Industry
Driven by the growing popularity of ringtones, graphics, and mobile games among mobile phone users, the mobile content industry has continued to see tremendous growth over the last few years. While market indicators point to a strengthening demand for content in the coming years, future success is likely to be largely dependent on delivering a satisfactory experience for the end user. Ensuring this is however easier said than done as the seemingly simple process of mobile media adaptation actually involves several considerations and processes such as porting, transcoding, quality assurance, and operator certification before delivery. Moreover, mobile content needs to be adapted in accordance with factors such as increasing device fragmentation, multiple content formats, emerging distribution models and multiple mobile-content adaptation business models and the introduction of mobile video services has also given rise to a new set of expectations for content formatting and delivery.
With respect to transcoding, the dominant approaches are manual, in-house automation tools, and third-party automation tools. While outsourcing is also an option for media adaptation, Frost & Sullivan believes that a majority of mobile content providers adopt one of the above approaches to handle mobile media transcoding. Smaller companies predominantly employ manual transcoding methodologies for ringtones and graphics and as with mobile games, large mobile content aggregators have either developed or are in the process of developing in-house media transcoding tools. 'These in-house solutions find the best match between different versions of a media piece and the requesting device in real time and content is then dispatched,' notes the analyst of this research service. 'For example, InfoSpace, Inc. has developed a content to device mapping application (C2DMA) that acts as a single transcoding solution for all media pieces- ringtones, graphics, and henceforth for mobile video as well.'
Healthy Opportunities for Third-party Porting Solution Providers
Although large mobile content providers are more inclined to developing and using their own content adaptation solutions, companies providing third-party content adaptation tools also have an important role to play within the porting market. It is difficult for mobile content developers to keep track of the newer devices that are being introduced, especially if it is a company with a global presence, and localization requirements can also be a factor in the requirement for third-party porting solutions providers. However, this is not to say that in-house, manual porting would not be used. Frost & Sullivan concludes that in-house manual content adaptation and outsourcing will both continue to be important tools in the industry’s progress.
Summing up, increasing device fragmentation is expected to continue to drive the mobile adaptations market. Although the industry has managed to render efficient services in the mobile video sector, premium mobile content pieces such as ringtones, graphics, and games are likely to be greatly impacted by mobile device fragmentation issues. This apart, mobile transcoding is also likely to be a significant issue for both application to person (A2P) and person-to-person (P2P) content transmission. 'In future, Frost & Sullivan anticipates the development of unified solutions that can address application porting as well as media transcoding within a single framework,' says the analyst. 'Expected modularity, as well as hosted model can then considerably increase the target segment for solution providers.'
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