December 7, 2004

A Library and Cinema in Your Pocket

By DOREEN CARVAJAL

ARIS, Dec. 6 - One day before too long, when your mobile telephone sounds, it could be a novel calling to recount how the headstrong heroine dumped the handsome heartbreaker. Or it might be a guidebook surfacing at a critical moment in a crowded bar to provide you with pickup lines in Spanish, French or German.

The increasing power of cellphones is fast shaping innovative forms of compact culture: micro-lit, phone soap operas and made-for-mobile dramas that can be absorbed in less time than it takes to flick through a book introduction.

Today very few people are using so-called third-generation mobile services, or smart phones, which allow users to browse the Internet and watch videos. But most cellphones sold these days have color screens and the ability to receive picture messages. So media companies are reinventing quaint old formulas with the aim of reaching youthful customers.

"Are people going to read 'War and Peace' on their telephones?" asked David Harper, whose company, Wireless Ink, in Cold Spring, N.Y., offers Web users cellphone-size literature on such weighty themes as the zombie apocalypse. "The answer is probably no. Right now the content on mobile devices is almost like early television. What they did then was to sit down and do a radio broadcast for the television screen. But there was a picture. Our mission now is to get feedback."

One pioneer is Media Republic, an Amsterdam company that is successfully reaching young women with the mobile equivalent of the French "roman photo," a sentimental genre of romantic still photos and text that dates to the postwar period.

Dutch users register their mobile phones to follow the adventures of the hormone-driven characters of "Jong Zuid," or "Young South," which is now in production for its fourth season. Customers receive two episodes daily, each with six photographs of well-known Dutch actors and text describing the travails of glamorous young people seeking their fortune in the big city.

A weekly subscription costs about $1.50, but most of the revenue comes from an assortment of corporate sponsors who pay for product placements, Web advertising and the exclusive rights to sponsor "Jong Zuid" contests and promotions.

Media Republic and a partner are to produce a similar English-language version, which will start appearing in Australia this month, using local actors and scenes. Called "My Way," it is calculated to appeal to young women, as did the Dutch phone soap, which attracted 78,000 subscribers, 68 percent of them women, with an average age of about 18.

Media Republic is planning to bring out other versions of the soap opera early next year in Germany and in France, where its partner, NX Publishing, is in the final stages of negotiation with major French television channels, magazines and mobile telephone operators.

"Everybody is eventually moving to video on mobile, and this 'roman photo' concept is a bridge for those people who are not able to use videos yet because they need a sophisticated telephone," said Jean-Michel Blottiere, NX's chief executive. "This is a step that could lead us very sweetly to video."

The market researcher IDC of Framingham, Mass., predicts that about 4.5 million smart phones will be shipped to stores this year and estimates that the number will grow to 35 million by 2008.

Almost two-thirds of the 62 million cellphones shipped in Europe in the last quarter were camera phones with color screens, according to Canalys, a technology consulting and research firm based in London. Only 3 percent of phones sold in Europe last year were smart phones, but Canalys expects that number to pick up substantially next quarter.

Still, that hasn't stopped a number of companies from trying to exploit the potential market. During the Asian Film Festival this month in Singapore, MediaCorp, a local company, announced that it was spending a half-million dollars to produce 45 two-minute episodes of a Chinese-language mobile video drama.

The giant British mobile-phone company Vodafone has struck a partnership with 20th Century Fox to create a made-for-cellphone video series, based on the television show "24," which will start appearing next month in the first of 13 countries. (It will eventually appear in the United States through Vodaphone's partner Verizon Wireless.) A British phone manufacturer, I-Mate, has also produced "Cjaq," a 10-part thriller with video about five young people trapped in a futuristic nightclub to which they were drawn by a hoax text-message invitation.

In Japan, major publishers like Shinchosha and Kadokawa Shoten have created Web sites to offer telephone reading material. Japan is also home to probably the most successful telephone venture. Earlier this year a mobile novel jumped from phone screens to the silver screen, evolving into a feature film, "Deep Love."

In the book industry in the United States, the initial reaction to mobile-lit is: "Are you kidding?" as one veteran put it.

Still, some major New York publishing houses are pondering the future. "We are paying attention, but we haven't entered the market yet," said Kate Tentler, vice president and publisher for Simon & Schuster Online. "It would be crazy not to look at this. Smart phones are everywhere and it's the fastest-growing device."

In Europe, even some old-guard publishers have jumped into the mobile format. The Munich-based Langenscheidt Publishing Group is a traditional, family-run company that would seem an unlikely player in this market. It has been publishing dictionaries, travel guides and map books since 1856 and is run by the fourth generation of the Langenscheidt family.

This month Langenscheidt started offering a phone-size flirting dictionary that is its way of promoting international understanding. For about $5, the service offers 600 or so phrases in the chosen language, and practical advice including phonetic pronunciations of polite brushoffs.

The benefit, said Ina Kaese, who manages Langenscheidt's mobile services, is that if you are a traveler in a foreign city in a busy bar, your telephone can be your instant guide to romance. It is the mobile equivalent of the 17th-century Cyrano de Bergerac, who famously supplied lines to the lovelorn. But certainly not ones like this: "Will anybody be jealous if I invite you to a cocktail?"