Watch While You Wait, Don't Wait While You Watch
Bamboo MediaCasting is a cool Israeli emerging company that provides the first “DVR” like application for mobile phones . Their solution set provides innovative solutions and support services for mobile content delivery. I met the CEO Guy Morag, a great guy recently at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. I think his company has one of the coolest apps I saw at the show. With Bamboo MediaCasting, carriers and service providers automatically push delivery of rich-media content that users experience with maximum convenience and crystal-clear quality:
Push – Bamboo MediaCasting delivers regular and episodic rich-media content to
subscribers in the background or during off-peak hours
Store – The pushed content is automatically stored in the phone’s memory giving you
a crystal-clear video and audio experience.
-No streaming or downloading; no WAP.
-Independent of the service connection; available anywhere – underground or on a
plane.Easy replay and social elements - show to a friend, share the experience, etc.
Play – When the consumer is ready for their regular dose of subscription programming,
they just click play and the show starts immediately.
Bamboo MediaCasting is like DVR for your phone:
- Tell it what you want
- The content gets delivered and stored
- Watch or listen when you’re ready, as many times as you want
Their application consists of a cool graphic user interface which engages mobile customers with rich-media such as video clips of sports highlights or previews of their favorite TV shows regularly and with great quality. With Bamboo MediaCasting, consumers watch while they’re waiting. They don’t wait while they’re watching. Users simply select the content they wish to receive either daily or weekly and the Bamboo software delivers the content to them in full-track form on a regular basis, eliminating the need for the user to always browse the Internet on the their phone in order to view content.
What makes their solution unique is their delivery approach. The service is easy to use and automatically pushes a self-selected mix of video and audio entertainment to the user's mobile phone, where it is stored for play at a convenient time and place. The company has paid a lot of attention to the user experience and features intuitive and adjustable controls for the service.
Alternatives to the Bamboo MediaCasting model for video and audio content include streaming, downloading and PC sync. Each of these methods has their deficiencies – mostly related to bandwidth issues, annoying browsing on a mobile device - and most importantly they require significant effort on the part of the user. On a home computer in a comfortable chair, while in a thermostat-controlled house or office, asking a user to navigate several web pages and wait for a download makes sense; much less so for a mobile user on a mobile device (small screen, no keyboard, inherent device limitations that will hardly change). Bamboo Media Casting provides a “white-label” solution to mobile carriers and operators. Key customers to date are France Telecom owners of many Orange companies such as Orange UK and Orange France. Their product Silverstripe is a client – server solution with clients running on various handsets and platforms. SilverStripe uses .NET (C#) and native code for Windows Mobile devices, J2ME for Java only handsets and Symbian code for Symbian handsets.
Their solution offers several models for advertising including full sponsorship of service, per-channel or per-program. Ad campaigns are very targeted based on the subscribers mix of channels and this data can be used to make the ads more effective to the advertiser and interesting to the subscriber.
Potential Strategic Microsoft Partnership Possibilities:
Bamboo MediaCasting can enable Microsoft to provide a 'lean back' experience on mobile phones for its consumers who regularly engage with Microsoft's web content assets as a natural extension to the web experience. Bamboo MediaCasting provides their solution on multiple platforms, including Windows Mobile and others. The solution functions as a native cross platform Microsoft Internet content bridge, allowing its consumers to easily and intuitively mobilize on-line content and consume Microsoft media on a regular basis.
Microsoft could also possibly extend its mobile advertising offering by utilizing Bamboo technology as a rule-based caching ad engine. Video ads will be served with perfect quality on any Microsoft mobile application, with full segmentation and reporting. Get more information at http://www.bamboomc.com
Company Facts
Location – Kfar Saba, Israel
Stage – Seasoned Startup with paying customers
Funding – $16M invested in Round A and B
Team – Guy Morag, CEO; Avi Marinstrauss, VP Sales; Meir Fuchs, VP R&D