Sprint to Stream Movies to Cell Phones

Sprint said on Tuesday it has entered into a distribution agreement with Disney subsidiary Buena Vista, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, and Universal to distribute a select group of generally family-friendly movies through a subscription-based on-demand service, for viewing over Sprint cell phones.

What Tuesday's announcement hasn't yet made clear, however, is whether Sprint's gamble will pay off and customers will bite. As the company's entertainment product marketing director, Alana Muller, put it, "Sprint Movies allows our customers to be entertained on the one device that they always carry with them."

Examples of this ever-present form of mind relief include watching a movie while waiting to pick up a child from soccer practice, or during long waits of two hours or more at the airport. At the same time, cell phone batteries tend not to last so long during continuous use.

Sprint did not list particular cell phone models in Tuesday's announcement, although it's likely the company's Sprint Movies service will be available for its mobile broadband devices, manufactured by Samsung and LG. While LG's Fusic model, available through Sprint, boasts a 4.5-hour battery life on paper, small print indicates continuous talking time is limited to 3 hours.

This is the same problem that Japanese phone carrier NTT DoCoMo has faced since as far back as December 2000, when it launched the first pay-per-view service for cell phones anywhere in the world, called M-Stage. Though that service is now considered a success, it offers much shorter-form content, and apparently on screens that can at least be turned sideways for a more reasonable form factor.

Sprint customers will be allowed to purchase the right to view a movie during a one-week period for between $3.99 and $5.99 USD per title. Users can also watch any of the service's selected MSpot movies -- part of a service the carrier launched in conjunction with streaming media provider MSpot last December -- for a monthly subscription fee of $6.95 USD.

MSpot indicated on its Web site it will also serve as the infrastructure provider for Sprint Movies, though in such a way that left open the question of whether that relationship will continue to be exclusive.