Qik's Live Mobile Streaming Open To Public

Qik, a live mobile video streaming service, has entered public beta, and the company has added new features and support for more phones.

The service, which has been in private testing for months, enables users to broadcast live video from a smartphone's camera to the Web over a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. The company emphasized the speed of the streaming, and said Qik has a half-second to three-second latency depending on the network's speed.

"We've been working hard to maintain Qik's position as the world's leading mobile streaming service. So, we are thrilled to be able to offer Qik to anyone who wants to stream live video from their phone or participate in the Qik community," said Ramu Sunkara, CEO of Qik, in a statement. "We are focused on changing the way people communicate with truly live and interactive video."

Social networking also will be key for the service, as the company said more than 60% of videos from Qik are shared by users on other sites. The public beta will feature embeddable video streams for Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut to go along with previous partnerships with Twitter, YouTube, and others.

The service currently is available for select Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones, including the Nokia N95 and the Motorola Q9h.

The company said it has created an alpha version of the service for the "jailbroken" iPhones by developing its own video capturing support without Apple. Because it doesn't have Apple's approval yet, the finished product may never wind up in Apple's App Store.

Qik is in competition with similar streaming services like Flixwagon, and Kyte.