TV Guide Mobile develops and distributes the company’s world class guidance content and tools to mobile devices. TV Guide Mobile products provide information about what’s on terrestrial TV, and the Mobile TV Electronic Service Guide (ESG) is offered to operators to provide guidance about what’s available through mobile TV services viewable directly on the handset.
Although TV Guide Mobile became an official business unit of Gemstar-TV Guide in 2005, the company is not new to the mobile marketplace. In Japan, TV Guide is a partner in G-GUIDE Mobile, one of the most widely deployed Java applications in the world. G-GUIDE Mobile is supported by NTT DoCoMo, au, and Softbank. The total number of registered users over these three carriers is 13.75 million. (as of March 8, 2007, according to D2 Communications). G-Guide Mobile, which is distributed on an ad-supported basis, provides TV listing and interfaces with the phone’s internal Infra Red blaster, turning the handset into a television remote control.
TV Guide Mobile now offers a similar TV listings application in the U.S. through leading wireless carriers Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless and Sprint, as well as direct to consumers through a number of online mobile software stores as part of Handmark’s Pocket Express. The application enables users to access listings, set reminders, get news and recommendations plus schedule DVR recordings using the wireless web.
TV Guide Mobile’s search uses SMS text messaging to enable quick searches for program tune-in information including channel listing, number, air times, and episode information.
TV Guide Network programming is also available on mobile devices. TV Guide Mobile collaborates with TV Guide Network to reformat over 30 episodes a week for the “third screen.” Series such as Watch This, Richter Scale, TV Water Cooler, and the 411 are distributed over major North American wireless carriers.
Another exciting product offered by TV Guide Mobile is Wireless TVGuide.com, an optimized version of TVGuide.com. The mobile site offers all the key features of the Internet version in an elegantly simplistic and user friendly manner. Traffic on the mobile site has attained millions of hits per month.
TV Guide Mobile has developed and is globally marketing an Electronic Service Guide (ESG) for mobile TV. The ESG is a launch pad to assist users in accessing multimedia services quickly and intuitively on any mobile device. TV Guide Mobile TV ESG is a comprehensive solution for video guidance unifying content delivered over today’s unicast networks and advanced mobile broadcast networks, while maximizing opportunities for competitive differentiation. This friendly consumer interface will be familiar to millions of cable TV subscribers around the world and enables consumers to intuitively navigate the full range of mobile video services. Additionally, this application is designed to seamlessly support multiple bearer networks including FLO technology, digital video broadcast handhelds (DVB-H), 3GPP2 broadcast and multicast services (BCMCS), 3GPP multimedia broadcast, multicast service (MBMS), and unicast streaming.
In September 2006, TV Guide Mobile was honored by FierceMobileContent as having one of the best wireless applications for 2006. The TV Guide mobile TV ESG received FierceMobileContent’s Top App Award – Convergence for its ESG application.
Leveraging this product in combination with related resources such as Gemstar-TV Guide’s portfolio of over 300 patents, data assets, interactive features, and advertising expertise, TV Guide Mobile is uniquely capable of providing comprehensive video guidance solutions tailored to suit the unique branding and functional requirements of mobile operators providing mobile TV services.
Headquarters
TV Guide Mobile is headquartered in New York City and Hollywood, CA.
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