Mobile TV has so far failed to deliver on its promise of ubiquity, reports the BBC, but analysts expect worldwide user numbers to increase to 54 million in 2009 and predict that by 2013 there will be about 300 million people watching TV on their smart phone.
“Mobile TV is just not as big a deal as we all thought it would be,” said Frank Dickson of Reed Business.
“The idea combines the two biggest things around: TV and phones. Everyone has a TV and everyone has a mobile phone. So of course the industry thought the prospect of bringing the two together was going to be huge.
“In reality, live mobile TV has been very slow to take off,” explained Mr Dickson.
In-Stat forecasts that the number of free-to-air analog mobile TV users will hit 54 million in this year, with the number of free-to-air users rising to 300 million in 2013. The statistics are specific to free-to-air analog mobile TV and not smart phones.
Weijie Yun, president and CEO of Telegent Systems, said: “The mass market for mobile TV has finally arrived. In the space of just two years, free-to-air analog mobile TV has accelerated consumer adoption of mobile TV.”
A study conducted by In-Stat and Californian chip maker Telegent Systems, revealed that mobile TV users watch at least three times a week, with 20% watching daily. Two-thirds of respondents in the white paper said they watched mobile TV for 30 minutes or more on the days they tuned in.
Flo TV, which is owned by the wireless company Qualcomm, agreed that the amount of time people spend on mobile TV has surpassed the early belief that users would consume content in five-minute “snacks”.
In-Stat expects free-to-air analog mobile TV to do well in countries which have not yet formulated plans for digital TV.
Mobile TV standards including ATSC-M/H (which piggybacks on tv programs in the United States), DVB-H (which piggybacks on tv programs in Europe), MediaFLO (on a dedicated cellular channel), and DVB-SH (satellite delivered mobile tv). Using the broadcast model, these mobile television systems can only transmit a dozen or so tv channels at a time.
For years beaming television to the world’s four billion cellphones was thought to be the future for broadcasters, says Reuters. Now online stores have enabled consumers to choose their own mobile television. Strategy Analytics now expects the mobile TV broadcasting market to total $280 million next year. Only three years ago the firm forecast the market to reach $5.4 billion in 2010, reports Reuters.
Related Mobile TV articles on Dailywireless include; CEA Reflects on DTV Transition, Google Acquires On2 Video Compression, Video Streaming with Twitter, Lights Out for Mobile Broadcasting?, Mobile Video: Infrastructure Tsunami?,
