• A new report from comScore found that users of high-end smartphones are heavy users of mobile media and the mobile Web.

    iPhone and Android owners report using a lot more mobile media than other smartphone or mobile phone users.  In fact, at 80%, it seems that one of the main uses of their phones is for mobile media.

    This isn’t surprising for the iPhone, which began life as an iPod — playing audio and video.  It’s pretty surprising for Android, though.  I’m also surprised that Blackberry users aren’t consuming more media.  I guess they are too busy reading all those crackberry e-mails.

    Palm Barely Scores

    There’s some bad news for Palm in this report — only 2% say they intend to buy a Pre.  There’s still time to turn this around and create more buzz for the Pre, but if Palm has to produce a really nice update of the Pre at CES.

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  • So much cool tech.  So many choices.  But we still have a long way to go.

    I’ve written here before about my Palm T|X, which makes a nice handheld media player thanks to Kinoma and wifi.  With the Download Helper plug-in for Firefox, I can download Flash video and watch it on the T|X.  Pocket DVD Studio lets me put other videos on the T|X.  But what about the latest TV shows?

    I can download most of the TV episodes I’d want to watch (or save) from iTunes.  I can watch them on my desktop, laptop or on an iPhone/iPod touch.  Nice, but I don’t actually want to own most of these shows — I just want to watch those I might have missed.  And disk space on my old desktop is at a premium, so I have to archive HD videos immediately.  Why can’t I steam them and “pay” by watching ads, like on Hulu or the network’s own sites?

    On my Samsung Instinct, over the Sprint mobile phone network, I can watch streaming video.  Most “channels” offer short clips.  A few offer full episodes.  I can watch Heroes on NBC Mobile (though sadly, this season hasn’t hooked me).  I can pay extra for channels with premium content.

    We’re still not where I, as a consumer, want mobile media to be.  I want to …

    1. Watch what I want to watch, where I want to watch it.
    2. I want it to be free — ad supported is okay.  I only want to pay if I want to keep a copy.
    3. I want to be able to watch programs on a variety of devices — stream to my phone or over wifi to a computer or PDA/media player.
    4. I want to be able to watch on a mobile device, then plug that device into a TV to watch on a big screen.

    That’s my wish list for 2010.  Let’s see how close we get to making it happen.

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