The US may be out of the World Cup, but mobile TV providers are scoring big, says Light Reading.
Jay Hinman, director of partner and product marketing for MobiTV, says the World Cup has been the single biggest viewing event in MobiTV’s history. Their average viewership has increased fourfold to about 30 minutes per session, longer than the typical pop-in, pop-out users, Hinman says.
Through June 18, or the first eight World Cup matches, digital viewers spent 354 million minutes on ESPN.com, ESPN3.com, and mobile devices, ESPN said. That’s compared to 4.5 billion minutes that TV viewers spent watching World Cup coverage on ESPN and ABC.
With help from ESPN’s promotional efforts, MobiTV’s new iPhone app is now close to 1 million downloads — the second-highest revenue-generating iPhone app in Apple’s store. On the iPhone, users can download the free app or purchase a one-, three-, or six-month subscriptions. World Cup content isn’t included in the free app, but it’s encouraging users to upgrade for it. The success has also encouraged MobiTV to launch an Android app this year.
“If you watch any World Cup game on regular TV they keep talking about watching it on your PC or mobile device,” Hinman says. “They are doing a tremendous job of raising awareness. This is the event they wanted to start to drive people to mobile.”
MobiTV is available from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. It uses cellular channels and costs about $15/month and may work with your current phone.
Qualcomm’s Media FLO, using a dedicated 700 MHz channel, has had little impact on the market. Qualcomm has spent almost $1 billion trying to find the Mobile TV sweet spot, notes Rethink Research. “Mobile TV is just not as big a deal as we all thought it would be,” said Frank Dickson of Instat.
The FCC chose the ATSC system for digital TV which, with the choice of 8VSB modulation, which makes mobile reception difficult, so broadcasters have come up with a “fix” called ATSC-M/H standard. The ATSC A/153 standard (when available), will delivers a “hardened” bit stream to mobile devices. Unfortunately, the M/H standard will require considerable overhead (pdf). It is expected that only about 18-38 percent of the bits allocated to the service will be available for actual service payloads.
Harris says MPH typically delivers about 1.1 Mbps of payload in a 4.4 Mbps channel (pdf). That’s 25% efficient.
The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) is an alliance of U.S. commercial and public broadcasters formed to accelerate the development and rollout of mobile DTV products and services.
In May, OMVC launched the Washington Consumer Showcase of Mobile DTV technology (pdf)with a specially-modified Samsung Moment phone and a prototype Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks with Mobile DTV. The Washington showcase involves nine DC-area TV stations broadcasting 23 Mobile DTV channels with dozens of programs that are now available throughout the Washington-Baltimore viewing area on specially-equipped Mobile DTV receiving devices.
