Nokia: Mobile TV in turmoil

By on April 14, 2008 in News

You know things can’t be all good with mobile TV when one of its biggest proponents – Nokia favours the DVB-H standard – admits that rollout aren’t going as well as the company had hoped.

Head of internet services t the Finnish handset maker, Niklas Savander, told Reuters that broadcast mobile TV “is a bit in turmoil… We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads. Roll out is slower than also we anticipated a couple of years ago.”

Nokia may not have predicted it, but from the time mobile TV started being discussed, a lot of other people did. The success of downloads is probably due not only to their greater accessibility – everyone can get 3G, not everyone can get DVB-H programming – but also it seems to suit mobile usage patterns better. A three minute snack TV program is handy when you’re waiting for the bus, a 30 minute broadcast TV program less so.

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  • http://shkspr.mobi Terence Eden

    A 30 minute program is great when you’re commuting – unfortunately the coverage on the trains/tube isn’t so great. I currently download shows from the BBC iPlayer’s iPhone service. Perfect for watching / listening on the move.

    Streaming is great if you have consistently good coverage – as is DVB-H. But for those of us in the real world, a VideoPodCast is probably the best experience to chase. Until TiVo move into the phone PVR space :-)

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  • http://www.smstextnews.com/category/ben_smith Ben Smith

    @Terrence: Agreed – I use a couple of Freeview tuners in my Mac and ‘EyeTV’ which gives a poor approximation of Tivo-like service in it’s newest version. I sync via iTunes to the iPhone, but the other option that has worked well is to setup my own video podcast feed for the E61.