I want my m-TV free
August 5 2008 - 2:53 pm EDT | Colin Gibbs | RCR Wireless News
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If there’s one lesson to be gleaned from all the mobile TV trials in the last year or so, it’s that users aren’t very interested in paying for the stuff. In just the last couple of weeks:
• Toshiba said it will shutter its Mobile Broadcasting Corporation in Japan — at a cost of nearly a quarter-million dollars — citing a failure to find an audience amid a host of free competing offerings.
• An effort to deliver a video subscription service in Germany fizzled after carriers reportedly balked at supporting DVB-H, opting instead to offer phones that receive DVB-T broadcasts at no charge.
• The BBC said it is hoping to resume 3G broadcasts at bargain-basement rates after a 12-month trial that saw “limited” daily reach (peaking at just 580 viewers in June 2007) and a monthly average consumption of just 13 minutes per month.
• And a one-day audit of DMB usage in Korea – a hotbed of mobile-phone usage — by TNS Media found that overall viewership was a mere 1.17% of consumers, with roughly 3.6% tuning in during the evening commute.
MobiTV provided one of the few bright spots on the landscape, notching its 4-millionth subscriber. But even that news was tempered by the service’s slowing growth: the company took 10 months to add its latest million customers, but its expansion from 2 million to 3 million users required only eight months.
So is mobile TV dead on arrival? Well, yes — at least in terms of using a phone to watch traditional broadcasts. It’s become clear that users aren’t interested in shelling out $10 or $15 a month to watch David Letterman or “The Office” on a tiny screen while on the go.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no interest in wireless video. Mywaves
The problem, according to a new Parks Associates report, is “an obvious chicken-and-egg obstacle” where users are loath to pay for a new service, and won’t be exposed to mobile video unless they do. So the key, it seems, is to tap the advertising dollars that have always supported television, and to leverage both user-generated content and premium offerings to get consumers to tune in. Because in the era of YouTube and Hulu.com, convincing users to open up their wallets for any kind of video is a tall order. Asking them to do it for traditional TV on a postage-stamp screen seems doomed to fail.
August 7, 2008 04:06 pm
but the big guys in wireless (in the USA) won't offer something for free. they would rather not offer it if they aren't making money.
August 6, 2008 04:25 pm
Need and requirements normally drive development. When something is developed ahead of its need or requirement, it will struggle to gain any traction just as mobile TV. The mobile TV-investeds must now 'create' the need, or, adapt to the need & requirement once they decode it from the consuming public's bit stream. Maybe AvgJoe's sports focus catalyzes consumers to reveal what they really want.
August 6, 2008 04:25 pm
Globally subscription services are not gaining the kind of traction that was originally anticipated. What is gaining very fast adoption is free-to-air mobile TV. At the end of 2007 there were more than 5 million viewers of free-to-air mobile TV worldwide receiving NTSC and PAL broadcasts on their handsets, and within six months of when the technology first arrived on the market. In China, a Telegent Systems survey revealed that three quarters of respondents were watching TV for thirty minutes or more on their mobile handsets per viewing session, and more than half were watching at least five times a week. So it is also sticky. I think generally it is a matter of the industry figuring out what business model consumers prefer. This model that appears to be meeting with consumer success is 1) delivery of the same content that consumers view on local channels, at the same time, for free 2) potential for operator revenue derived from ads, related services, increase in voice and data services, upsell to premium content, etc.
August 6, 2008 08:10 am
Have you looked at what the ATSC is doing with ATSC M/H? This is the mobile TV standard for US broadcasters. They too believe that a free-to-air model that is ad driven could work where other services have failed. They also believe that local content is very important, especially local news.
August 5, 2008 03:04 pm
Mobile TV will take off when the programming content matches real-time broadcasts on the air. Consumers don't want to select from only a handful of shoews offered by each TV network and they don't want to learn a whole new programming schedule- 1 for home and 1 for phone viewing. This thing is going to bust until:1) Simulcasting takes place2) The above simulcasting include lots of professional sports. Those sports fans are manicacs and WILL pay premium rates for NFL or NBA live on their handsets while they're sitting at work or on a comuter train.