Sunday, June 24, 2007

7.3M Mobile Broadcast TV Users in Japan

Screen Digest reported this week that the total number of Mobile Broadcast TV handsets sold in Japan has reached 7.3M by the end of Q1 2007, according to official numbers released by the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA). Japan launched its own standard for Mobile Broadcast TV, called ISDB-T or OneSeg, in April 2006.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

APAC Mobile Broadcast TV Market Heating Up

Serveral announcements made this week at CommunicAsia 2007 and Broadcast Asia 2007 in Singapore signal a wave of upcoming trials and commercial services of mobile broadcast TV in the Asia-Pacific region.

MiTV and Nokia announced that they will launch a commercial DVB-H service in Malaysia in the second half of 2007. The infrastructure for the service will be integrated and maintained by Nokia-Siemens Networks, and the first handset to support the service will be the new Nokia N77.

Philippine Multi-media System, Inc. and UDCast announced that a commercial DVB-H service in the Philippines will also be launched this year, following a successful trial held in Manila. During the trial, PMSI is broadcasting 8 TV channels to Samsung DVB-H handsets, but the variety of both channels and devices is expected to increase at the time of the commercial service launch.

And in Hong Kong, cellular operator PCCW will conduct a technical trial of Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology which will run through November this year. Another MediaFLO trial is currently underway in Taiwan, run by China Network Systems and Taiwan Television Media.