After 3 years in development, meticulous testing and product prototyping, Kiswe Mobile chairman Jeong Kim told DC Inno that 2016 will be the year his startup introduces a truly unique, cloud-based, video media technology platform to a wide audience. According to Kim, the company has a number of flagship sports programming trials set to go this year, including ongoing work with Ted Leonsis' Monumental Sports Group via the Washington Capitals and Wizards.
In short, Kiswe Mobile is a broadcast and tech partner that works in tandem with premier networks to offer sports viewing experiences that combine numerous video feeds enabled by custom-made Kiswe panoramic video cameras. This results in a bevy of different video angles and vantage points, effectively adding a layer of depth to live sports events.
Kim declined to discuss the investors supporting his New Jersey-based company by name. Instead, he said that the long list is comprised of several NBA team owners, accomplished finance executives and venture capitalists that I would surely "know by name."
Fans who access these untraditional video feeds would do so directly from a broadcast network's mobile application, like the ESPN or NBC Sports' app, without knowing that Kiswe Mobile is the company behind the technology. In other words, the company's technology is designed to a be a "white label" solution.
"Transform live events into interactive mobile app experiences," Kiswe Mobile's website reads.
Advantage
In a world where a growing community of sports fans have access to multiple devices, and are commonly interacting with a tablet and/or phone while watching a game on television, Kiswe Mobile's technology brings a next generation viewing experience that actually takes advantage of a person's multiple screen watching tendencies.
"Transform live events into interactive mobile app experiences"
And though it's not uncommon, for example, to watch a Washington Wizards' game in which the camera crew pans between shots of the court and perhaps to the audience or to get a direct court side view from the hardwood, the addition of Kiswe Mobile's tech would allow for viewers to have much more control over how they watch the aforementioned action — translating into a video experience that is more inline with how someone watches a sports game in-person, from the stands, rather than from a couch, Kim explained.
Future
In 2014 and 2015, Kiswe Mobile ran several smaller trials with the Washington Mystics, D.C.'s WNBA team and another property of Monumental Sports Group, along with a prototype for the Full Court 21 Championship, an outdoor street basketball competition that gathered hundreds of elite athletes in New York City.
Kim told DC Inno that the biggest product trial on Kiswe Mobile's plate right now is an important U.S.-based international soccer tournament that will be televised by a "premier broadcast network" in 2016. He subsequently declined to name the network.
Interestingly, Kiswe Mobile has been operating in a sort of quasi-stealth mode since being founded in early 2013 by Kim, a Navy veteran and renowned technology entrepreneur whose company Yurie was acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1998 for $1.1 billion. He later served as the president of Bell Labs. Prior to a career in the technology industry, Kim received his undergraduate degree and PhD from the Baltimore-based John Hopkins University. His naval career comprised of 7 years aboard a nuclear submarine traversing the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
