CTIA: MobiTV launches business-focused TV

SAN FRANCISCO – MobiTV today gave a glimpse into its product strategy roadmap with its latest application, Mobi4BIZ, to be made available for Research in Motion’s Blackberry Bold when the handset is launched in the fourth quarter. The product, a combination of live video, video on-demand and Web data, is the first of what will be a series of vertically customized mobile television services centered on a special interest area.

The mobile broadcast provider, which recently reached 4 million subscribers, is partnering with CNBC for video content and up-to-the minute stock market data to be displayed on a CNBC ticker that runs across the bottom of the screen. The integrated media application will also pull content from Bloomberg Television, FOX Business and TheStreet.com. Consumers can create a customized watch list that will dictate what content is pulled for viewing.

“We knew there was a strong attachment to finance and financial news, particularly in today’s economy,” said Ray DeRenzo, MobiTV’s senior vice president of product, programming and marketing. “We looked at the demographic and knew that many of the people with affinity to financial news were strong users of email. Blackberrys had a very strong presence in this segment, so we talked to RIM about building a video app targeted to enterprise users.”

DeRenzo stressed that Mobi4BIZ is not a trading or financial application but a video service that works in real time and offers hyper-personalized information about identified companies of interest. At launch, the subscription service will only be available to Blackberry Bold users, but MobiTV plans to extend it to other smartphones, including Palm and Windows Mobile devices.

The company already has a Hispanic product featuring 25 Spanish-language channels as well as MobiDJ, featuring music video programming and live content from FM digital radio. These applications fared well amongst their target user base and got MobiTV thinking about other verticals that could have similar success. According to DeRenzo, an enterprise-focused app is just the beginning. The vertical-centric strategy could be extended to other areas of interest including sports, educational programming or a children-focused app, to name a few.