MWC 2009: mobile video experts Vantrix want better brand recognition

Patrick Lopez, Chief Marketing Officer for Vantrix explained that the main problem the company faces is brand recognition. “We’ve been around for a long time and we’ve been very successful. But we’ve mainly been selling through many partners, and our product is sold and re-sold so our name is not very well known. In some cases, selling partners use our technology embedded in their core tech, so their name is imprinted. Today our message is to get our success stories out there, and that is a tremendous challenge”.

So what does Vantrix do?

Vantrix began in 2001, when Japanese mobile giant NTT DOCOMO wanted to sell multimedia content (ringtones and wallpaper, mostly) for mobile phones. It found this extremely difficult, as there was no standard and every device worked on a different codex. It approached wireless voice processing company Voice Age with a proposal to create a multimedia content manager. The result was Vantrix, which claims that 80% of all wallpaper and ringtone sales in the US now goes through it’s management system.

What’s the news for MWC?

The Vantrix mission has changed somewhat since then. It now aims to deliver the best multimedia user-experience. It’s vision is to capture any content from any source and optimise it for delivery to any network. For example, to take an IPTV feed and deliver it to MMS, or visa versa.

It’s main announcement for the Mobile World Congress is the Media Profiler. The service allows the TV or video content from wireless, broadband, linear analogue or digital TV to be viewed and controlled on phones, PCs, TVs and set-top boxes. The example we were given is pausing a TV show you’re watching on your mobile, then switching to PC and continuing from where you paused..

What we think?

Sounds like a great service. I know I like to watch shows when I’m on the move (I got through a lot of Battlestar Galactica coming to and from MWC, for instance), so it’s nice to be able to pause on one device and pick up on another. But what are the challenges to this service? Firstly, it’s an entirely streamed service. Vantrix relies heavily on transcoding. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s also true that complete downloads are becoming more popular since storage space really isn’t an issue any more. Pausing and transfering shows takes care of itself when you can completely download a show or movie and move the file from device to device yourself.

Mobile TV and video are really expected to go places this year. I’m waiting to see which service is going to be more viable in the long-term: streaming or downloading?