Hulu — that joint venture from News Corp, NBC Universal and Disney — might be aiming for a new mobile model, according to its chief Jason Kilar.
Kilar, speaking at a conference this week, said the company is looking into a mobile presence that will include key platforms and that the service will "embrace any device." Kilar said that Hulu would like to support Apple’s iPhone and iPad and that it won’t be locking itself into supporting any singular platform.
Hulu is aiming to have its mobile offering compliment its desktop service, and the move feels pretty similar to TV.com’s venture into the mobile space. Hulu is, however, a little late to the party. TV.com launched its mobile app for the iPhone last February and was downloaded more than 1 million times in just under two months.
Hulu will likely have a bit more success if it offers something similar: full access to the content available on the Web site and videos broken up into chapters that are more suitable to mobile snacking.
Most took the comment on embracing multiple platforms to mean Hulu will expand to a variety of mobile operating systems, but it could also be that Hulu is looking beyond Adobe’s Flash and may develop a platform that works with HTML 5 or another video platform that will work on Flash-unfriendly devices like Apple’s.
Hulu is currently limited to the Web with its Flash-based video player and its associated advertising, and it would take a large amount of reconfiguring of content to work with other media players and smartphones that don’t support Flash or only support limited implementation of Flash.
Google
was able to do it for YouTube, the iPhone and others, so Hulu will be able to follow suit and will likely do so before a mobile launch.
It looks like the easiest platform for Hulu will be to expand with Flash 10 for smartphones, which could give Android, Symbian, webOS and Windows Mobile a leg up on quality and launch, requiring a few tweaks but no major changes.
The biggest question for all of this: "How much will it cost?" TV.com’s app was free but contained a lot less content, and it’s — for the most part — all owned by CBS. Expectations of price are running wild from a $5 to $10 app or for monthly subscription fees at around the same price that offer a variety of tiered streaming options.
Many are saying the iPad will force a change in the market because it is somewhat of a mobile device but it will likely be used for longer content engagement, not traditional snacking. The best thing to do for the iPad is to have that idea in mind when pushing out an app, but to aim the app at the iPhone and iPod Touch. These devices already have an installed user-base in the millions while the iPad has yet to sell a device. That device might have a higher amount of usage per user, but apps will be reaching out to mobile devices by and large; that should be the aim of anyone coming out with a multi-platform app and approach. |
