10 essential factors for successful Mobile TV…
By Ben Robinson on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 6:04 PM PST In Mobile TV
Without hanging on the detail too long, a report has been created by digital research agency ‘Tomorrow’, and commissioned by the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA). It states the 10 essential factors for successful Mobile TV, of which I am going to comment on a few below – but before all that, here’s the full list:
OK. So there are some obvious ones, and perhaps some that are less so. Let’s dig deeper on a few of them:
- Ease of use – has got to be the core property of Mobile TV to suceed, surely? If a service is unappealing, because it’s not intuitive, it will frustrate and irritate
- Content – is king. End of story. If you don’t attract users with killer content, we might as well turn of all the various transmitters now! The reality of what that content is, to-date, has been premium sports content (largely Premiership football from what I’ve seen in Europe and Asia during my visits!)
- Advertising – what the report calls a ’sleeping giant’, and I’ve have to agree – I’ve yet to see a coherent system for placing ads, tracking them, and then linking the brand owners and agencies to the technology. It’s difficult stuff to do, but someone(s) is going to crack this soon – especially with numbers of Mobile Ad players being snapped up by the big Internet companies in recent months
- Lifestyle – slightly more esoteric, but a really good point to bring up – what’s the geography of your population, and how does that affect how they will consume Mobile TV? Understanding the existing context of media consumption and usage provides insight in to how to make a successful Mobile TV service
These are just a few of the points raised by a well-written piece – the link is below if you want to drill down further – but it does leave you thinking of the many considerations that MNOs, broadcasters, and in fact all players in the value chain are going to have to manage, to make Mobile TV a success.
[Via: ADOI Magazine]




One of the most important factors is also the addressable user base based on the user handsets.Many of the new phones can still not show any type of terrestrual mobile TV and are unlikely to change it merely for the mobile TV service.
Interactivity and integration of Web 2.0 services including IMPS is also important.