How Does Mobile Live Streaming Work in 2021?
Would you like to broadcast to your audience from your phone? Live stream mobile video games for your viewers?
You’re not alone. Frankly, it’s a smart move. It’s predicted the mobile live streaming market may exceed over $240 billion by 2027. But how does it work? Can you live stream from apps beyond Instagram and TikTok? Share your screen?
The answer is yes. We’ll cover all this and more below.
Ways to Broadcast While Mobile
Live streaming from iPhone and live streaming from Android devices have been made much easier over the last few years. Developers have seen the value of broadcasting in real-time via social media. You may have seen people go live from their phones on the following:
• TikTok
This has given influencers, businesses, and artists a new way to interact with their audience. However, these apps aren’t necessarily optimized for real-time screen sharing from your mobile device.
How To Stream Your Screen?
Thanks to Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) encoder apps, you can give live demonstrations or stream mobile games to your audience easily.
RTMP maintains a continuous connection with minimal delay, which has done wonders for those offering one-to-many streams. It’s not limited to computer or console-based streaming; mobile broadcasting can happen over RTMP with an encoder app.
The App Store carries iOS RTMP encoder apps, while the Google Play Store has Android iOS RTMP ones. These encode your video and deliver it to an RTMP ingest server, allowing you to broadcast your screen.
When deciding on your iOS RTMP or Android RTMP encoder, keep the following in mind:
• Usability
• Price (including in-app purchases)
• RTMP outputs (most apps only allow for one)
• Portrait orientation (you don’t want a sideways stream!)
Should You Worry About Lag for Real-Time Mobile Broadcasting?
Improved technology has greatly reduced latency issues when live streaming from iPhone or live streaming from Android devices.
4G was a big step up from 3G, as it boosted data transfer to a new level. 4G continues to see improvements, but keep an eye on the 5G roll-out.
Verizon claims delays will be almost impossible to notice on a 5G network — a major boom for those interested in mobile streaming. It’s also up to 100 times faster than the current standard cell connection. As mobile networks continue developing, lag might even be something streamers don’t think about at all.
Final Thoughts — 2021 Looks Good for Mobile Live Streaming
With the development and widespread roll-out of 5G coming this year, mobile live streaming becomes faster and easier than ever. But 4G isn’t going anywhere any time soon and is still solid for streams.
Mobile streaming in 2021 is particularly user-friendly. More social media apps are hopping on the broadcast train, while iOS RTMP and Android RTMP encoder apps allow specialized streams.
Here at Streamaxia, we deliver tools and SDKs for developers to add live-streaming capabilities to their respective apps. You get the ability to deliver transcoded streams, with filters, effects and augmented reality.
