With the rise mobile devices, preferences for media consumption clearly changed. Although, nowadays you can already choose what to watch and when, Bulgarian-born Flipps saw an opportunity for innovation in this area. The startup created a service for convenient video watching between mobile phone and flatscreen and just got the global player Rhapsody on board.
New services will be available worldwide
Flipps (formerly iMediaShare, read more here) provides a solution that connects videos from your mobile phone to a TV near you. To enlarge their programme offer, Flipps partnered up with Rhapsody, the owner of Napster, and is now streaming music related videos, interviews and live performances. “A lot of our users are passionate about music and we’re thrilled with the opportunity to collaborate with Rhapsody to deliver original music video content on the big TV screen,” Kosta Jordanov, CEO of Flipps said.
CEO Kosta Jordanov Photo credit: FlippsWhile it took them about two months to seal the deal, the technical integration was done in less than a week. The new services will be available worldwide, with content outside of the US being provided by Rhapsody International’s Napster brand.
For Rhapsody, Flipps’ professional content and their growing audience were reason enough to bundle together. Moreover, their consumer friendly streaming service was appealing: “Flipps has done a great job of making their mobile application ridiculously simple – no need for other hardware, just navigate straight from the smartphone,” Paul Springer, Rhapsody International’s SVP of Americas and Chief Product Officer, said.
A future focus on user engagement
Some weeks ago, Flipps widened their scope in another area by partnering up with BatteryPop, Happy, HooplaKidz, Studio 100, Toon Goggles, Viewster and Vipo. For Jordanov, the fact that there was an “amazing feedback”, from very young users of the newly integrated kids programme, proofs the ease of handling of the Flipps interface.
These programme expansions were already in talks in May when the Bulgarian startup which is present in Sofia, New York and San Francisco, received an investment of 2.4 million dollars (read more here). But with children’s and music channels, Flipps seems not satisfied yet because when asked about the plans for the near future, Jordanvo already predicted more partnership announcements as well as product enhancements with options for more user engagement.
“Unlike most other mobile companies we believe TV is here to stay. […] Viewing habits are changing indeed and people start to expect from the TV the immediate gratitude, the full control and the time- and place-shifting they get with their iPads. We’re lucky to be in a great position to offer that experience on the TV screen,” Jordanov closes.
