VF Germany Head says Mobile pay-TV won’t work

Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Group’s German business head, Fritz Joussen has said that he doesn’t think pay-TV on Mobile devices is feasible, due to the development of newer handsets that are going to be able to display terrestrial (presumably DVB-T) signals….

He was quoted in the FT Deutschland as saying “These devices came as a surprise and call a payment based subscription model into question”. He also added that to generate the alternative revenues, VF was planning to offer on-demand video services for things such as TV programmes and Music video clips.

This is pretty much a sign of the times for Mobile TV right now – the two big issues of broadcast (or not) and business model keep rearing their heads – with the added spin in this case that handsets capable of picking up broadcast TV without using any specific mobile variant, are appearing – as a result, according to Vodafone, the business model gets blown apart. My money is on advertising being leveraged heavily to make the existing/planned Mobile TV services some sort of a success….

[Via: Telecom Tiger]