As rumored earlier this week, live mobile video streaming service Qik has raised $3 million in Series B funding from Marc Benioff, Arjun Gupta, and George Garrick.
Qik allows users to stream video from their camera-enabled phones to a number of platforms including TV, gaming consoles, and the web itself. Currently only a subset of Nokia phones work with Qik, although the company has plans to support all smart and Java-enabled phones.
Competitors include Mogulus and Kyte. Qik has raised a total of $4M to date. The company recently joined up with Justin.tv to provide that lifecasting service with mobile capabilities.
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Justin.TV will today start offering live mobile streaming to its users via a tie-up with Qik.
With the new service, Justin.TV users will have a option to stream from a mobile phone directly from their control panel without the need to have a Qik account. The integration is seamless, and the only difference in the video feed will be a Qik logo somewhere on the screen.
Qik has grown rapidly since first launching in invite only alpha testing. Despite not being open for signups, the service has over 2000 regular users (Scoble and Calacanis among them) and is growing at approx. 20% a week. Justin.TV needs little introduction, having created the live streaming genre and gone on to become a highly popular service.
I spoke to Justin.TV’s Michael Seibel and Qik’s Bhaskar Roy prior to today’s announcement. Justin.TV sees the deal as a value add for its users that gives it an edge over competitors. I mentioned Qik’s partnership with Mogulus and Seibel said that Justin.TV doesn’t see Mogulus as a competitor, noting that while their focus is on webcams and quick to use and stream shows, Mogulus is focused on high quality, TV level productions. Roy said that Qik sees the partnership as another way to get their service out to more users, and that after their testing phase they are ready for the growth the Justin.TV deal will bring.
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Amsterdam based LiveCastr, a service that lets users live stream video from their mobile phone, launched today at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It joins a parade of competitors that have launched over the last couple of years, including Mogulus (not mobile), Qik, and Flixwagon among others.
Davos was a good venue for launch - founder Ralph Cohen has already captured live videos with Larry Page and Bill Gates while roaming the halls.
The main difference between LiveCastr and Qik is that Qik requires a software download to the phone - meaning that only a handful of handsets can currently be used with the service.
LiveCastr has both a software solution as well as allowing users to make a simple video call with their phone. The video call is lower quality, but it works with virtually all European 3G mobile phones and many U.S. ones as well, without the need to install any additional software. Streamed video can be viewed on the LiveCastr site or via an embeddable widget.
While LiveCastr just launched, the company has been providing mobile services for some time via their IceMobile site. LiveCastr is currently in private beta - request an invitation on their home page.
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