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From Big Screens...to Little Ones

Techstination feature for Thursday, April 8, 2004

From the big screen….to that little screen in your pocket. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Sure there are big differences between movie or TV screens….and the little display on your cell phone, but entertainment companies have their eyes on those small screens. Rio Caraeff is vice president at Sony Pictures Mobile….where the latest project involves porting the upcoming Spider Man 2 movie…onto cell phones…

"We have a whole range of mobile entertainment that's tied in with the upcoming release of our Spider Man 2 film on July 2nd. So we have a whole range of 3D games, 2D games, pinball titles, master tones and ring tones, animated ringers, screen savers, wall papers, video clips, premium SMS services, a huge Spider Man 2 offering that will be available in over 40 countries around the world in 7 languages."

In the scheme of things for Sony..it's still a pretty small business, but cell phone content is more than a marketing tool for movies and TV shows. For instance…

"Some of our popular game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and Joker's Wild are all 2.99 a month on the Verizon service." How many people are paying for it? "We have about 150 thousand subscribers to Wheel of Fortune and some of our other game shows on Verizon today."

And Caraeff says Sony Pictures is confident those sales numbers, mostly to people between 19 and 35, will only grow. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.