• Reuters, Friday, September 15, 2006 11:18 AM

Following the announcement Tuesday that News Corp. would be buying a majority stake in the mobile content company Jamba, Peter Chernin, News Corp. president and COO, speaking at the CTIA Wireless Association conference, proclaimed that mobile "could be one of the greatest media platforms ever created. It could rival television, the Internet and literally anything." He pointed out that what's holding back the mobile-content industry is the cell carriers' control over distribution, which is exactly what some media outlets have said the company's majority stake in Jamba is all about. Lowell McAdam, a Verizon evp and COO, agreed that distributing content in a user-friendly way is crucial to growth. However, you can be sure that the carriers want to retain control over which applications wind up on their networks. "If a customer buys an application and it turns out to be a bust, they go to the carrier first. We've got some 20,000 customer-service representatives answering those kind of questions and it's a big cost," McAdam said. Added Chernin: "Under the right conditions, mobile entertainment is just one step away from exploding"--by which he means that Hollywood and wireless carriers need to develop good content, a working business model and the right set of standardized technologies for the medium. But the wireless market is already exploding, according to CTIA research. Revenue from mobile data services was $6.5 billion in the first half of 2006--up 70 percent from a year ago.

Read the whole story at Reuters »