MSNBC.com has launched Multimedia on Mobile, which offers news and entertainment to Windows Mobile smartphones. The downloadable application is available from gomobile.msnbc.com, and is free and supported by advertising, both trackable display and pre-roll ads for the video. The service was developed in partnership with Action Engine Corporation and uVuMobile. It’s currently available direct to consumers, but MSNBC hopes to partner with carriers for distribution.
I haven’t seen a demo yet so I can’t talk about usability. I like the sound of the application...I have a few issues. First, it’s a bit too Microsoft. Integration is great, but launching a mobile version of a major website that only works on a minority of handsets (Windows Mobile smartphones) is foolish, even if the news site and the OS are from the same company. The service is even launching with Windows Mobile as the sole sponsor—I can see it would be very useful to be a major advertisers when you’re launching an ad-supported product, but it gets downloaded to Windows Mobile devices anyway...sort of preaching to the converted, there. Also (and this is really nitpicking a bit), the mobile website is unwieldy—why not just m.msnbc.com?