SlingPlayer Now Available on iPhone
It's the last of the major smartphone platforms to get SlingPlayer Mobile, but the iPhone now has one -- for $29.99. You've got to have the SlingBox at home, but it allows users to access their cable TV on the go without additional subscription fees. The only catch is that you've got to be on a WiFi connection; it won't work on AT&T's network.
Hulu is reportedly coming out with an iPhone app as well.
Why is this important or significant? Smartphone users continue to consume more and more video on their handsets. But price remains the central barrier to subscription-based mobile TV services. (However we recently found a majority of mobile users were not interested in "mobile TV.")
Free or ad-supported mobile video services or those such as the one from SlingMedia will eventually crowd out all but a small number of the paid "mobile TV" services. I would also expect the cable companies to eventually try and offer a Sling-like mobile video/TV service perhaps as part of an upsell package. But they may be very slow in doing so.