CoreMedia interview: Multimedia and DRM - Part 1

By Alun Williams

Posted on 21 Nov 2005 at 14:56

Does a close relationship with one service provider prejudice relations with the other major players?

No, certainly not. To work with a strong partner like Vodafone has strengthened our expertise in mobile DRM. And it helped to strengthen our partner network with very strong partners such as IBM, HP, Hitachi or Siemens in the Asia-Pacific region.

Telecommunications companies require high-performance and future-proof software solutions to process and market new types of mobile services. They require solutions to optimise existing business processes and open up new areas of success. That is what we deliver. Today, CoreMedia DRM is deployed by mobile operators across the globe on all continents.

What is to stop the likes of Vodafone, or O2 or, perhaps best of all, Virgin Mobile (with direct access to content) from carrying out the work that you do themselves? DRM issues are often carried out unseen behind the scenes as far as end-users are concerned...

We have a strong expertise in content and telco infrastructures. With our large number of content technology experts, we can actually respond at a high speed and be the fastest to implement innovations. Also, we are able to implement additional components that go way beyond the standard including work flows, interfaces or management capabilities - elements that we learnt very early from the area of content management. Combining our knowledge from digital rights management and content management actually is a very compelling offer for all our clients.

Where do you believe power lies between original content creators, service providers and handset manufacturers when it comes to mobile DRM implementations? Which party has the upper hand? Service providers have sourced the content, but handset manufacturers provide the hardware that can control the encryption/DRM that is possible...

The mobile content market will grow to $30 billion globally by 2008.
Mobile music alone is expected to be worth around $3 billion, or 10 per cent of the total music market. For operators to maximize the revenue from this opportunity, they need premium content. To gain access to content such as ringtones, full-track music, video clips and games, content providers need to be reassured that their copyrights will remain secure throughout the whole distribution chain.

This is what CoreMedia DRM is designed to deliver. And our recent news from today, the CMLA licence, underlines this strategy. We help ensure that digital media can only be played when the consumer acquires digital rights to do so in advance - either for preview or rental, with a limitation of usage frequency or of time - or with complete purchase of the media file.

MICROSOFT

Core Media recently introduced a PC element into its DRM support, providing interoperability between the Mobile OMA standard and Microsoft Windows Media DRM. How difficult a technical challenge was that, or are the Microsoft APIs quite straightforward?

CoreMedia is the only company offering this technology at this point - so it's not easy! APIs are not the issue but combining two different DRM schemes in a robust manner.

Is it inevitable that Microsoft eventually makes the most of its installed Windows user base to capture the DRM market, controlling access to content that flows across the Windows operating system?

Many operators are afraid of Microsoft's dominance and at the same time, Microsoft has had difficulties entering the cell phone and consumer electronics sector. So there will be co-existence of different platforms for a long, long time. And it needs players like CoreMedia to deliver technologies that overcome these platform gaps.