In mid 2007 the mobile industry was full of hype around the opportunity presented by Mobile TV. Multiple companies were investing in the space, handset manufacturers were announcing handsets that had TV tuners built in and there was a standardisation process ongoing to ensure there was cross border compatibility of mobile TV in Europe. So where are we today?
DVB-H is the EU standard for mobile TV
Italy is the "showcase" market for DVB-H with 900k subscribers
MobileTV offerings are available from operators in every european market
That's the good news - but all the marketing effort today from mobile operators is going on mobile broadband - so what happened?
It seems that in spite of the broad, simple appeal of mobile TV, consumers don't actually watch it. The BBC ran a 12 month, cross network trial in the UK of TV services - offering their broadcast TV content over 3G on mobile. The "highlight" of the results was simultaneous viewing by 580 people. That's across 5 networks and around 60m people. Not a thrilling statistic.
Yet at the same time the usage of internet video, including TV video in the same places has increased dramatically. BBC's iPlayer service (on Demand TV) and similar services are available from all the major UK broadcasters
These services are moving people away from an assumption that TV is all about "broadcast" and to an expectation of "on demand" and "interactive" content.
The MobileTV value proposition - which was based on an assumption that people would be watching broadcast TV en-masse has been enabled just as consumers are making the shift to new forms of content consumption.
The real success for entertainment on mobile will come from enabling new, innovative interaction models with audiences - what happens when the phones of everyone in the digital living room let you to interact with the show that's you are watching together on the TV?
FRRcvh Cool! That's a clever way of looking at it!
Posted by: Donyell | April 10, 2011 at 01:30 AM
MtjBas Good point. I hadn't thought about it quite that way. :)
Posted by: Latrice | April 10, 2011 at 01:54 AM