ROK Entertainment Group – most renowned for mobile content – has entered the manufacturing space, but with a difference. It’s not going to release a new phone… but a laptop?!?
It’s acquired a controlling 51% stake in notebook manufacturer Rock. Under the deal, ROK and Rock will share their expertise in IPTV (Internet TV), mobile internet and mobile entertainment and something called ‘place shifting’.
Rock specialises in market-leading notebooks such as gaming the notebook with the world’s fastest graphics – the Rock Xtreme 770 powered by the 8800M GTX graphics card by NVIDIA (pictured).
ROK (the mobile content one) says it took the stake to take advantage of the increasing convergence of mobile and PC technologies, particularly in the mobile broadband space.
How much ROK paid for Rock is unknown so this deal could either be a brilliant move by the mobile content company, or a hugely expensive folly. Mind you, if mobile broadband services keep progressing like they do (especially Wi-Fi), then they might just be onto something.
i-Play, the British mobile entertainment company, will see its mobile content sold through retailers on miniSD and microSD memory cards, after a deal with mPortico.
mPortico said the deal will circumvent problems accessing mobile content like network limitations, download costs and the need to click through loads of menus to get to content.
At first this is a US distribution agreement as the above are apparently still issues there. Here in the UK, accessing and downloading mobile content from handsets is becoming increasingly more widespread.
That said, this wouldn’t even be the first British example of selling content on memory cards - Rok is already a major player in this space.
With mPortico’s cards, anyone with a phone with a compatible memory card slot can simply insert the card to access the content.
What makes it a little different is that the cards use mPortico’s own EZ-XS platform and if users sign up to mPortico’s Mobile Media Network, they’l be able to buy new content over the mobile internet from its mobile content store.
The cards will be sold in retailers across the US from early next year, with other countries following suit soon after.
ROK Talk for mobile conferencing ROK, the mobile entertainment specialist, is starting beta trails of its latest product: ROK Talk. It’s a downloadable Symbian application which allows the conference calls between up to 30 people at the same time.
ROK is best known for music and video content for mobile phones, but ROK Talk is an interesting idea. It will manage your introductions to conference calls, invite members from your contacts list, schedule conference calls and add people mid-call. It only needs to run by one user and group members can be saved for later use if they all regularly chat together, then set up for a call in three clicks.
ROK says the application is aimed at individuals organising social outings, business users and the ’socially networked generation’ who don’t want to be sat in front of a computer all the time.
The thought of 30 people chatting at the same time on one call seems like quite a daunting one, but then it’s probably no different to everyone being gathered round a table in a bar or restaurant. The beta test will involve up to 500 people who have signed up to the testing so if you want to take part, you better do so right away.
[ROK Talk website]
