Ustream is anticipating Apple’s approval of the first non-jailbroken iPhone application that will let users record and broadcast live video from the device. Last month MobileCrunch obtained a picture of the application running on a test phone. Yesterday, co-founder John Ham demo’d the product for me here at TechCrunch – see the video below.
The application lets users broadcast live video from the phone, as well as read and participate in user comments.
Competitor Qik has had a similar application running on hacked phones since August 2008 (also here). Flixwagon has a similar application for jailbroken iPhones. But no one has gotten one through Apple’s approval process.
Here’s the video:
Note that this is a different application than we wrote about yesterday. Yesterday’s application allows people to watch Ustream videos on their iPhone (which is also really cool). This app lets people broadcast live video from their iPhone to the Internet.
The application is currently pending approval from Apple, and Ustream isn’t saying much about when that might be. But stay tuned, hopefully this is coming very soon.
I really wished all of you guys would stop teasing us with this. Apple has users clamoring for this. At least I am. If Ustream beats everyone to the app store I it will be amazing considering how long Qik and Flixwagon have been churning the details about their product.
I’ll be amazed too, didn’t Kevin Rose or Scoble say that we were supposed to see the Qik app “in a few days” last November or something?
The quote by the CEO saying nobody has ever recorded video on a non jailbroken iPhone is a bold faced lie. Either that or he is VERY uneducated. Jailbreaking has NOTHING to do with achieving this fuctionality. The sole reason no apps record video and made it to appstore is either
A. Use private Apis.
Or B. Use public camera api which is in an unintended manner and doesn’t fit sdk guidelines.
And any amature in obj-c can figure out how to do this with the public camera api.
What drunknbass is saying is spot on. For the record, Cycorder sat in the App Store approval queue, ignored, for months. If you want to run a good story on a video recorder getting submitted to Apple, you are half a year too late: Cycorder was submitted to Apple at the very launch of App Store.
NICE. Thats what I’m talking about…
W00t!
yeaaaaaaaaaa
I’ve been using uStream to broadcast video since almost day one of their initial beta release. This would be huge, especially since I just got my iPhone 3G a couple of weeks ago.
@Jeff I’ve seen your show on Ustream…always wondered what BT stood for?
Congrats Ustream… good stuff
So does this mean the rumors are true!?! Is this Ustream’s own IP?
So they have a broadcasting and viewing application?
The future is here!!!
All iPhones, or 3G iphones only?
Partially Related Grievance:
It terribly annoys me that QIK has the iPhone right next to all the phones with “native” usability in their “SUPPORTED PHONES” section.
Now if only the iPhone had a camera that was worth some decent quality for… anything really.
Agree. The iPhone camera suckssss.
Now I’ll be able to record a video on the go, and post it to my blog right from my iphone!! I’m stoked!
I wonder if this is Apple’s way of slapping Qik’s hands for building a jailbroken video app? I can just see some product guy sitting there saying “well since they didn’t follow our rules their app approval is going to the bottom of the list…”
Should have asked if the app would be free or not.
[In response to the video]
It’s a running on an non-jailbroken iPhone, big deal.
Qik has ad-hoc versions of their software that runs on non-jailbroken iPhones (you know this, Michael). A select group of people are already streaming live from their non-jailbroken iPhones. Ustream certainly isn’t the first to do this.
Now, will they be the first ones to get their application into the App Store? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Of course Mike knows that, and he isn’t saying otherwise…
“Now, will they be the first ones to get their application into the App Store? We’ll just have to wait and see.”
…And that is what Mike’s whole post is about.
actually, no I didn’t know that.
Jon, you missed the point. Qik officially pushes a jail broken version.
The story is that Ustream is not jail broken and possibly the first.
Everyone knows all the apps in the app store get ad-hoc for development not sure why this news or important.
Apologies to Jon, then.
I would pay $20 for this application – it’s so f*cking awesome!
I hope this app is better than Qik.. it sucks on 3G…
3G sucks in the US. Thus, Qik sucks.
Looks good to me. That functionality would be very useful for a project I’m planning for the future. Live streams from practically anywhere = win.
That is a good thing Apple is doing. But every new technolgy has two sides. As the webcams are used wrongly to broadcast some nuisance causing data, this too is expected to be used wrongly! But when will it be approved, because many products for iphone are not yet confirmed in the market! – Internet Techies
This is awesome, I love it.
The iPhone developer license forbids using undocumented API’s. Last I looked, there is no documentation for video capture. When there is, there will quickly be dozens of apps using it. I doubt Apple is going to reward UStream for violating developer license.
BTW, my theory on why live camera access is not supported is it would probably drain the battery too fast. At this stage of the rollout they don’t need any bad PR about battery life. If they add video later, the story will be “video drains battery” rather than “iPhone battery sucks.”
@tim you’re a moron
Doubtful.
If this app comes out, I’m out to buy an iPhone immediately!
oh look another video streaming app on the iPhone … I’m sure there are lots of these. The issue is when will apple let it on the app store … I’m thinking sometime in the next 97 months !
I’m going to stop getting excited about seeing stuff like this until I see something in the wild … until then it might as well be vapor wear !
Nige
It is up already!
Downloading it right nowwwwwwwwwww
It is already on the app storeeeeeeeee
nice gadget
iPhone 3G S is gonna rock the smartphone market
Can’t wait for it to come out.
6 months after the article is written and not only is Ustream streaming from iPhone not available in app store, the one in Cydia is broken on 3.0 on 3GS.
Michael Arrington please update us.
Would love to see an update on this story.
I upgraded to the 3gs and now I can’t do live streaming from ustream. Very frustrating.