“We anticipate we’ll have our live streaming games available on iPad in the fall,” NBA Digital SVP and GM Bryan Perez told our paidContent Mobile conference on Tuesday.
Perez said the NBA is now ready to consolidate its mobile strategy, after initially rolling out a wide array of apps.
“This (mobile growth) is happening so quickly, we needed to test as many business models and pricepoints as possible — free app, paid app, team app — every single team across three platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry).
“I’m not sure the engineering team would want to go through it again, but it’s proved to be terribly valuable … We’ve gained a lot of knowledge. So you’ll see us rationalize those platforms, create a bit more elegance and bring all that learning together. We’ll still maintain some form of team branding because people are fans of the team first.”
The NBA started live streaming to iPhone and Android back in October.
Some highlights from paidContent Mobile’s The Strategy Game panel:
— BBC.com Americas SVP Miranda Cresswell:
— On HTML5 video and the BBC News iPad app: “We are figuring out a way to make BBC web video available on the iPad. We have re-cut our plan to make sure we can get it done as fast as possible. I think it’s the publisher’s responsibility to make sure the content is available.”
— On the $12.99-a-quarter BBC Listener subscription radio app: “Close to an hour on session length for that app, which is phenomenal.”
— On traffic: “In the past three months, we’ve doubled our mobile web impressions” thanks to iPhone and Android consumption.
— Verizon business development executive director Jennifer Byrne:
— On data consumption: “On Droid X, we’re seeing something like 5x the data usage of any other device.”
— On apps vs web: “The real tipping point for the browser will be 4G because it will literally be your computer in your pocket … quasi-instantaneous – that’ll be the point we see even more activity on the browser side.”
— On getting more open: “While we may have had the first app store, GetItNow, we’ve learned a lot, with the watershed being the iPhone. It’s a drastic change from the walled garden stage to the open approach. It’s been a very big shift.” Verizon has “embraced” it, Byrne said. “We’ve seen a tremendous response – so its validated the decision.”
— Zagat Survey co-founder and co-chair Nina Zagat:
— The guide was an iPad launch partner and a partnership on restaurant reviews with Foursquare: “It’s developed in a way that we’re able to bring Zagat.com together with Foursquare. We interview people who become mayors.”
— Full circle: Nina Zagat likened the publisher’s mobility efforts to “the portable guide we created back in 1982”. Likewise, our own Staci D. Kramer called Zagat “the original user-generated content.”
— Augmented reality urban guides? Not quite yet, Zagat’s mobile exec Ryan Charles contributed: “Augmented reality is good but not great — we’re reaching the limits of the technology – it’s interesting and definitely somewhat gimicky, but it can be effective.”