Sprint to Offer Full-Length Mobile Movies

From the big screen to the (very) small screen: Sprint Nextel is expected to announce plans to beam full-length movies to mobile phones.

Mobile operator Sprint Nextel is expected to announce a partnership with mobile media company MSpot to provide full-length movies to mobile phone users. The service, which should be available to subscribers immediately, would enable subscribers to view an unlimited number of shows, movies, concerts, and other special programming for a flat $7/month fee on top of other regular charges.

Sprint’s move comes as wireless companies struggle to enhance their service offering into new areas like photos, video, and music, primarily to create new revenue streams as the market for mobile voice services stops growing. While Apple is demonstrating a potential portable video market with its recently introduced video iPod (and partnerships with Disney and NBC to sell current and classic television episodes via the Internet), the market for watching full-length movies on a tiny 2- to 3-inch screen is unproven, especially if that video has to be streamed in real-time over wireless broadband networks which, although growing, don’t yet offer nearly the coverage offered by traditional, still-unreliable cellular networks.

Of course, mobile video services may face the same problems as satellite and cable video: so many choices, so little worth watching. Although Sprint says they plan to offer roughly one new film every day as the service ramps up, initial offerings on Sprint’s movie service aren’t on anyone’s top-ten list of must-see flicks. Early content will include the 1961 Brando/Malden western One-Eyed Jacks, George Romero’s 1968 camp classic Night of the Living Dead, and the 1986 Ally Sheedy/robot buddy film Short Circuit. Not exactly awful films, but are they something for which cell phone users will pay another $7/month to watch in their entirety on their phones? Sprint says they plan to divide films up into scenes and segments, similar to DVDs, so mobile phone users can more easily watch the films in short chunks. Sprint and MSpot are also reported to be in negotiations to offer more recently-released content, although no potential titles or distribution partners have been announced.