Verizon (NYSE: VZ), playing catch up with some of its cable competitors, has launched apps for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS devices, including the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, which allow subscribers to view rented and purchased video-on-demand content.
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Verizon's FiOS apps allow subscribers to view rented and purchased video-on-demand content via mobile. |
The apps are now available for free from the iTunes App store, and work in concert with Verizon's TV Everywhere platform, Flex View, which has been on the market for almost a year. Flex View allows users to watch content on up to four devices, as well as on their FiOS-box equipped TV. Flex View currently in available only to FiOS subscribers, but the company in May said it was weighing whether to offer it outside its subscriber footprint.
Verizon has been long-chasing an iPad app. In August 2010, just four months after Apple rolled out the iPad, the telco gave a brief peek at live TV on an iPad, saying it would be available initially only in a subscriber's home.
At the time, Verizon CIO Shaygan Kheradpir, demonstrated the iPad app--called "What's Hot"--and described it as a "software set-top box," that showed a selection of programming viewers in a user's area are watching. Users can then tune into any of the shows by using the touch screen.
It took more than a year for Verizon to work out the tech-and content rights.
Both Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) already are using the iPad to stream live and on-demand content to subscribers.
For more:
- see this MCN article
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