BBC and SKY Lead UK Mobile TV Rating Chart

A new research published by Telephia found that 33% of mobile TV viewers in the UK watch BBC 1, 29% watch Sky Sports, and 24% watch the Discovery Channel. Next on the list are BBC 2, BBC 3, BBC 4 and ITV 1 with 22% each. However, overall penetration of mobile TV services in the UK remains low: According to Telephia, only 3% of all mobile subscribers in the UK watch mobile TV or video content.

UPDATE: The Inquirer posted an item titled "Telephia's mobile TV research begs channel questions", claiming that BBC1 is only available on Virgin's DAB-IP service which still has very limited adoption, and BBC2, BBC and BBC4 are not available at all on mobile phones. Telephia posted a clarification on their website, stating that their statistics include all TV delivery formats, including live streaming, on-demand streaming and downloaded video clips.

New Mobile TV Handsets

According to a new report by ABI Research, penetration of mobile TV handsets in Japan and Korea is increasing, with over 14% of Korean handsets already supporting mobile broadcast TV. In the past two weeks, we have witnessed a flood of mobile TV device announcements originating in South East Asia. Here are some examples:

• LG launched a slim mobile TV phone, less than 11 mm thick.
• Samsung announced two "ultra-slim" mobile TV handsets, the SCH-B510 which supports S-DMB and the SPH-B5100 which supports T-DMB.
• Samsung also announced the SCH-B560, a rotating-screen T-DMB handset.
• The SCH-B600, Samsung's new 10-Megapixel camera phone, includes an S-DMB receiver.
• Motorola announced a satellite DMB phone for the Korean market called "Moto View".
• Taiwanese handset vendor Gigabyte announced the GSmart i200 handset, a DVB-H device running Windows Mobile 5.0, and featuring a VGA display. The handset includes a mobile TV receiver chip by Siano Mobile Silicon, and DVB-H client software by Panthera.
• Another handset powered by the Siano receiver was unveiled by by Chinese ODM TechFaith Wireless. The handset is a dual-mode mobile TV phone, supporting T-DMB, DAB-IP and DVB-H.
  

Other recent announcements of mobile TV devices include a navigator and a PDA by LG, and a PMP by Korean vendor Yukyung Technology.