PacketVideo, the pioneering wireless media platform provider, has announced that it will support Microsoft’s Windows Media 9.

PacketVideo provides an end-to-end solution for streaming interactive media to mobile devices over virtually any wireless network, including publishing, server and client components. It currently supports 3GPP standards such as MPEG-4, but will now integrate Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 technology into its platform, eventually enabling users to view content in a number of formats on the same device. PacketVideo will be able to deliver content in Microsoft Media format to Symbian, Nucleus and Windows CE .NET devices such as Pocket PC and Smartphones 2002.

“Our customers want flexibility in designing new products and services,” said Dr. James Brailean, chief executive officer of PacketVideo. “The addition of Windows Media 9 Series is a great complement to our current 3GPP products, offering a combination of leading technologies that give customers the choice they want. This agreement represents a new era of cooperation that will drive the wireless industry forward toward the successful deployment of innovative multimedia services that enhance communications, information and entertainment to bring people closer together.” Will Poole, vice president of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft, added: “PacketVideo is a leading provider to the wireless industry, and it has a deep understanding of customers’ needs and concerns. Coupled with the launch of Windows Media 9 Series, this agreement opens up new opportunities for wireless operators to access the wealth of high-quality Windows Media content available on the Web, and for content owners to use a secure, high-quality format to reach the vast array of new, media-enabled wireless devices around the world.”

Insight

PacketVideo has been somewhat wrong-footed by the industry-wide delay in launching mobile multimedia services. Two years ago, PacketVideo was already demonstrating an interactive wireless streaming video service using iPaq Pocket PCs and an HSCSD connection to Sonera’s network. It has already shown it is capable of delivering a robust platform for wireless media applications, it’s just a question of when operators decide to move on commercial deployments.

Support for the latest Microsoft Windows Media technology is a sensible addition to the platform, if only as an insurance policy against the day when Microsoft finally manages to proliferate its media formats across server, desktop and mobile environments. At present, however, this will primarily be of interest to those operators such as T-Mobile which have commited to a Microsoft .NET environment.