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Posts Tagged ‘Mobile TV’

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Toshiba shutters mobile TV service

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Is this the deathknell for broadcast mobile TV? Toshiba’s four year old mobile telly subsidiary, Mobile Broadcasting Corporation, is soon to be shut down.

Says Toshiba:

“Since its establishment, Mobile Broadcasting Corporation has provided diverse services in an attempt to build a subscriber base and enlarge its business. However, the number of subscribers has not reached a sufficient level to sustain operations and, following a thorough review of operations, the company has decided to cease broadcasting.”

The service will be closed down by March next year. However, it doesn’t look like Japan has lost its enthusiasm for mobile TV in general – rather, it just wasn’t that keen on this service: other reports say that there are 20 million mobile TV watchers on a rival offering in the land of the rising sun.

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Mobile TV – Hit and Miss

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

An interesting survey from QuickPlay Media has revealed that while 41% of consumers have watched TV or video on their phones, 44% do not even know if their operator offers mobile TV.

So pretty impressive penetration rates and also a shocking lack of awareness.

So which is it – is mobile TV a Hit or a Miss?

To be honest for me mobile TV is definitely a miss – I wouldn’t ever want to watch twenty minutes of Eastenders (for our non-UK readers – a dodgy London based soap opera that charts the different levels of misery that our nation’s capital drives people to) while stuck in my cattle-truck of a commuter train. Mobile video on the other hand – a round up of last night’s The Apprentice, or a summary of the game from Euro 2008 – that’s a winner. But do people really need a mobile for that? With the internet (and mobile internet) and iPods etc, do I need to subscribe to mobile video?

From the survey though, it seems that many people are keen to watch. Other stats include:

- 33% have watched for upto 60 minutes or longer

- 65% said they’d be willing to watch ads if it meant a free or discounted service

The press release doesn’t say how many people were surveyed, but it does say that the UK results closely matched those for the US.

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Vodafone Germany not impressed with mobile TV

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

It looks like Vodafone’s Germany head isn’t too impressed with mobile TV so far. After getting turned down for a mobile licence in the country, which went instead to Mobile 3.0, a consortium of publishers, the operator said it will now focusing its mobile TV efforts towards selling add ons. According to Forbes, Vodafone plans to offer services through which customers can buy products seen on mobile TV, such as songs aired on music television.

Another Forbes article reports the German head Fritz Joussen as saying he doesn’t see a viable business in offering pay television via mobile phones after the emergence of phones that receive regular terrestrial TV signals. “These devices came as a surprise and call a payment based subscription model into question,” he adds.

While I can’t help wondering why, if Vodafone was so unimpressed with mobile TV, it bid for a licence in the first place, but it’s right to pick up on the question of whether paid TV is the way forward. Vodafone has repeatedly championed the cause of mobile advertising – I’m surprised it hasn’t already starting giving away mobile TV clips in return for ad viewing. After all, it’s what we’re used to on terrestrial TV – we know the model works, why not export it to mobiles?

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Qualcomm to launch UK mobile telly?

Monday, May 19th, 2008

Could Qualcomm be thinking of bringing its MediaFLO mobile TV service to the UK? It’s shaping up to be a possibility after the company bought a slice of spectrum in the recent Ofcom auction.

According to Qualcomm, it’s now got its hands on the 40 MHz (1452-1492 MHz) of L-Band radio spectrum, for the princely sum of £8.3 million. It hasn’t given any definitive word on what the spectrum will be used for, except to say it will “bring a variety of innovative wireless technologies to the UK market”, along with its partners.

Needless to say, it’s keeping quiet on the partners and the services in question, but it’s worth noting that the press release the company’s put out about the spectrum quotes an exec with the clunky job title of “president of Qualcomm Internet Services, MediaFLO Technologies and Qualcomm Europe” – could that be a hint on what we’re about to see? After all, it’s got a bit of history over here with mobile TV, following a trial of MediaFLO in conjunction with Sky not so long ago.

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AT&T turns on mobile TV this week

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

And after all the talk, it looks like AT&T has stuck to its deadline and it’s going to be launching its broadcast mobile TV service – under the unsurprising brand name AT&T TV – from May 4, with two compatible devices, the LG Vu and the Samsung Access.

The service, based on Qualcomm’s MediaFLO, will go live in 58 cities, with the usual mix of broadcasters from the likes of CNN, Comedy Central, MTV and Fox, with the usual mix of movies, news, comedy, and music content being promised.

At least now we get a chance to see the pricing: and it’s $15 a month, which seems rather ambitious on AT&T’s part. How long before it switches to an advertising (free content in return for ads) or bundled (all the data you can eat and mobile TV thrown in for good measure) model?

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Dish testing mobile TV with Alcatel

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Looks like the Dish Network conundrum is finally settled – the company is indeed getting into the mobile TV game, after announcing it’s teaming up with Alcatel-Lucent to test a system based on the DVB-SH standard.

The test looks like it’s just a small one without any consumers involved – according to the pair, the trial will take place in Dish’s labs from May to August with a view to finding out how well it performs and how much it costs.

The trial seems a little on the small side for anyone seriously thinking about getting into mobile TV any time soon. But if Dish really is just testing the water without a full scale rollout in mind, why did it buy a great big chunk of 700Mhz spectrum recently?

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Mobile TV ads worth $500 million by 2013

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Analysts have been polishing their crystal balls over mobile TV and they reckon that it could soon be a top notch way of delivering adverts. A new report from Juniper Research has found that this year, mobile TV will earn $335 million in ad revenues while by 2013, that figure will reach $2.5 billion. The whole mobile ad market will be $7.6 billion according to the analysts.

By 2010, mobile TV will also be the most lucrative channel for mobile advertising, although idle screen advertising will also do well, with ad spend $7 million this year and up to $500 million in 2013.

If mobile is the biggest generator of ad revenue, it looks like we can expect more free channels and programming on the way. If there’s one thing that could open up mobile TV more than anything else – be it good handsets, clever standards, and so on – then it’s possibility advertisers will make sure we can watch TV gratis. As long as we can get over all those annoying ads…

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Local broadcasters testing 3 mobile TV standards

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Regardless of how mobile TV has performed to date, it looks like more and companies can’t wait to get involved. According to AP, the Open Mobile Video Coalition – a collection of owners of over 800 local TV stations – is testing three broadcast mobile TV standards.

The group will provide recommendations for a standard to standards body Advanced Television Systems Committee and hopes to have it approved by next February, when the US will switch off its analogue TV signal.

It looks like there could be a new trend in mobile TV broadcasting: both the Open Mobile Video Coalition and ICO Global Communications are launching mobile TV services but want to sell them as suitable for other devices, as well as mobiles, like in-car entertainment systems or laptops. By increasing its potential market beyond mobile devices, could this give mobile TV the push it needs for mass market take-up? Or is it a sign that purely mobile TV isn’t viable?

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