Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Where do we stand today on mobile TV services?

These are pretty exciting times, with live TV services over cellular networks launched by most 3G operators worldwide, from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia to Italy, France, UK and the US. While adoption of these services by consumers has been quite high, market research has shown that viewers don't spend more than 30-40 minutes on average per month watching TV on their mobile phones.

Korea launched two competing mobile broadcast systems in 2005, S-DMB and T-DMB, and Japan will soon follow with the commercial launch of mobile ISDB-T in Q1 2006. Many trials of T-DMB and DVB-H have been performed in Europe and other parts of the world, and this year we are expected to see initial launches of commercial services using one or both of these technologies. The competition between T-DMB and DVB-H in Europe, and the competition between DVB-H and Qualcomm's MediaFlo in the USA, are likely to generate a lot of headlines in 2006.

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