This morning Techmeme surfaced a news release put out yesterday on Businesswire that came with the following headline: The Number of Customers Actually Purchasing Mobile Video Service Could Climb from Only Five Million at the End of 2006 to Almost 80 Million by the End of 2012. I had to reread the headline twice, just to make sure it wasn't a Dave Berry humor piece.
Irish analyst firm Research and Markets put the piece out to promote their new report titled New Video Dynamics: Outlook for Mobile Video. Now, aside from the fact that I remain personally skeptical that people will actually pay for downloaded video clips, one has to wonder what they were thinking when they crafted a headline that conveys that those rare customers who purchase video today might possibly climb from paltry to a reasonably respectable number by 2012. Aren't analysts supposed to make authoritative statements?
Here's a test for you… see if you can read the headline using the same voice that John Cleese uses in Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch… and not laugh.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
