Watching Movies on Mobile Phones

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The hottest aspect of the relationship between mobile phones and movies right now is the possibility to download and watch movies on many mobile phones. There have been several recent announcements in the industry which suggest that making movies available on phones is one of the next big trends from handset makers. Major announcements in this vein are coming from Sony Ericsson, Samsung and the iPhone.

Sony Ericsson recently generated a lot of media attention with an announcement about a new service called Play Now Arena Movies. This service will allow people with Sony Ericsson phones to download up to five dozen movies per year to be watched on their smartphones. The movies will have to be sideloaded to the phone (meaning that they’re downloaded to your PC before being moved to your mobile phone). The purpose of this is to avoid the varying data charges associated with downloading immediately to the device. At the same time that the company announced its new service, it also announced the release of three new entertainment-specific phones. Two of those phones (the Satio/Idou and the Aino) are compatible with the Play Now movie service. Additionally, Sony Ericsson plans for some of its phones to come preloaded with the Play Now Movie Service in order to make their handsets more attractive to consumers.

The announcement from Sony Ericsson comes just a couple of months after a similar announcement from Samsung. The company launched a Samsung Movies site in March of this year which offers movie downloads to all Samsung customers who have a phone that is capable of playing movies. They have deals with all of the major motion studios to make feature films available for sale or rent for those Samsung customers who want to watch mainstream movies on their mobile phones.

The Samsung store was immediately compared to the iTunes store. It is already possible to download movies to the iPhone from the online store. However, the iPhone may be taken to the next level when the new version of the phone is released this summer. Rumor has it that it will be capable of direct movie downloads which would allow users to bypass the process of using the iTunes store and syncing downloads with the device. This rumor is unconfirmed but it’s certainly true that people are increasingly interested in using their mobile devices to watch films.

Via Dialaphone