06 February 2008

Developer Spotlight:
mBit Network Provides Multimedia P2P Services

How does legal, peer-to-peer music sharing on S60 devices sound? To more than 4,000 users in the Asia-Pacific region, very good. That's how many users signed up for a new service offered by mBit Network Pte. Ltd. of Singapore in just one month, and without a single dollar being spent on marketing.

Multimedia peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing has become a social phenomenon over the past few years, and mBit has implemented this concept on the Nokia S60 3rd Ed devices.

The mBit network, which enables peer-to-peer sharing of multimedia files on 3rd Ed devices among users in the APAC region, is now being tested in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia with local operators.

The mBit solution preserves the intellectual property rights of branded content, and it lets users send their own content to individuals, groups, or the social network at large.

“Our overall business strategy is to establish the mBit service with an incumbent operator in each country in Asia, and to interoperate the service, forming an mBit social network.” — See Chun Yan, CEO, mBit

The mBit network allows consumers to exchange photos, videos, music, and other files on a P2P basis. The peers can be mobile phones, PCs, or a combination of the two. The network’s purpose is to enable super-distribution and searching of large media content, including media files, games, animations, and application data. As user-generated and premium content becomes too large to send via multimedia messaging service (MMS) or download reliably over the air (OTA), the P2P method used by mBit becomes especially important.

While the mBit network technology is set up for P2P transmission, intellectual property rights of branded content are protected by digital signatures created on the mBit network. Only music videos or movie trailers for which mBit has obtained rights can be modified, shared, and broadcast on the network. Transmitted MIME types such as MP3 can be checked for keywords, and other audio files can be checked for copyright infringement.

“The network operated by mBit can serve targeted, localized textual and video ads to mobile users of our P2P services, which are interoperable between networks,” says See Chun Yan, CEO of mBit Pte Ltd. “This helps to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) for operators and service providers when users search and share files.”

The mBit service can be accessed via Web, WAP, and mBit S60 3rd Edition/Java™ MIDP 2.0 applications. Revenues from subscription fees, downloads, and mobile ads in 2008 are targeted at $9.3 million, according to See. “We expect to see 30 percent growth rates on a month-by-month basis,” he says.

“Today, users are getting savvy with what they can do to maximize the usage of S60 devices,” says See. “Most developers and content providers continue to support S60 devices first before they consider supporting other devices that run on other platforms. Symbian sites and applications are increasingly popular, which in turn helps developers to have access to more marketing channels.

With the popularity of Web 2.0, instant messaging (IM), voice over IP (VOIP) services, and growth in mobile advertising, many developers and Internet giants are rushing in to replicate the same functionality for mobile phones. Strategic relationships formed by Nokia with the music and movie industry are positioning S60 devices as the center of entertainment and communication.”

The S60 3rd Edition devices are great enablers of multimedia functionality, says See. “When the consumers want it — even if the operators don’t support it — their competitors will,” says See. “Thus we see 3 UK and Far EasTone launching VoIP services such as Skype.

Business users install fring; couch potatoes install SlingPlayer when the operators and TV broadcasters are slow to move. Such innovation has happened because the S60 platform is always improving itself by providing new features, great flexibility and support, and by getting feedback from the developers.

Nokia is releasing more sensitive APIs such as camera APIs for multimedia creation and better support in multimedia framework (MMF) to utilize the advanced codecs such as eAAC+ and H.264 and interoperate with PC formats such as Windows Media which remove developer cost in licensing codecs to play back media content. Video recordings are now stored as MP4 format by default.”