Streaming Video Better on Pre Than on iPhone?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 4, 2009 at 8:10 AM PT
Though it got off to a slow start, Palm’s App Catalog is slowly evolving into the ecosystem for which the company had hoped. It recently surpassed four million downloads and is poised for a bit of a growth spurt now that more applications have begun to appear on its virtual shelves. Indeed, in the last week, the number of applications available for the Pre increased by 40 percent to 58.
Now, that’s still a trifling number when compared to the 50,000 or so available in Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store, but it’s something, and it shows that Palm (PALM) is managing to convince iPhone-addled developers that writing WebOS applications will be lucrative business.
Among the latest and most promising of those new apps, DirecTV’s (DTV) NFL Sunday Ticket. Though the app–which allows users to watch NFL games on their cellphones–is available for the iPhone as well as for the Pre, it may offer a better experience on the latter, as Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk notes in a research alert this morning.
“We will be interested to see how this application performs on Sprint’s (S) network compared to how it will perform on the iPhone on AT&T’s (T) network,” Piecyk writes. “Sprint is more likely to allow a less compressed stream and therefore higher quality video on its network as we have seen with Sprint’s implementation of YouTube, which is much higher quality than viewing YouTube clips on the iPhone over the AT&T network. When the iPhone is forced to WiFi, the quality of the YouTube clips improves to the level we experience on the Palm Pre but that kind of defeats the purpose of the mobile internet.”
An interesting point and an interesting potential selling point for Palm and Sprint–especially given the beating AT&T’s network has been taking in the media lately.
Comments
More accurately, the headline should read “Streaming Video Better Over Sprint than AT&T.
Posted by David McAuliff at September 4th, 2009 at 8:52 amJ, Another fair article on the emerging PRE and Palm’s progress. Apple doesn’t need to worry about the Iphone’s place in the market because there is plenty of room for the everyone for a few more years. The webOS operating system is the best part and, I’m sure Palm will follow up with many more exciting new products now that they appear to be backon track. Keep up the great work!
Posted by Lee Meyer at September 4th, 2009 at 10:54 amSadly, I will never know.
Posted by David Owens at September 4th, 2009 at 11:48 amtime will tell about video quality, but you leave out a major flaw of the pre/sprint system. while watching the streaming football you can NOT receive a phone call. a football game is several hours long. hmmm, that kind of defeats the purpose of the mobile phone. i will gladly give up a little in video quality in order to actually still be able to use my phone. so much for multitasking. by the way, wifi does not defeat the purpose of the mobile internet, it enhances it.
Posted by glen engelmann at September 4th, 2009 at 7:53 pm