Disqus
From previous posts, you might know that I am always quite optimistic about Mobile TV – well a report from In-stat is a real humdinger in terms of good and bad news – the good being that the M-TV market could be worth $12bn in 2012, the bad being that the fragmented standards are here to stay. Here are some of the higlights:
- “DVB-H, ATSC-M/H, CMMB, ISDB-T, DVB-SH, T-DMB, and MediaFLO are just some of the most common standards currently in place or in development. And among these, there is even further disunion between free, pay-as-you-go, and subscription-based services”
- “The study shows that even though South Korea was the first country where mobile TV found a large audience, it is actually the European Union’s chosen standard DVB-H that has the most widely used in terms of operator coverage”
- In terms of popularity (i.e. number of users) “Japan’s OneSeg had reached over 20 million users in less than two years, and some userbase estimates of South Korea’s long running T-DMB standard exceed 10 million“
There are also of course other “Mobile TV” services that don’t rely on broadcast technologies. MBMS for example is a 3G-multicast technology, and there is 3G unicast in both industry standard and bespoke flavours – an example of the last of these is MobiTV, which…”just announced breaking 4 million subscribers (it reached the three million mark in October 2007 after just under four years with Sprint.)”
As with a number of recent reports I have read, the main “problem”, if you like, is monetization, or in other words, the “business case” – it seems most industry people just can’t get it to work, especially when you factor in any kind of network build costs (all the broadcast scenarios require new hardware in the network, and in most cases, the handset).
The report goes on to say that handsets are a really big issue too – for something to work mass-market, the big five handset vendors at least need to get behind it – whilst all of them are behind M-TV as a concept, they are divergent in their thinking about which technology they support to deliver it.
I am not so sure that the fragmented nature of the standards is the worst thing in the world – just as some trends, content, and ideas are region or culture-specific, so can the practical deployment of the technology be – for me, at the moment, the real issue is making Mobile TV pay….
[Via: betanews.com]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
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Diana Jovin
