Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Mobile Broadcast TV Users in Korea Reach 11 Million

Telecoms Korea reported yesterday that as of February 29th 2008, the number of satellite DMB subscribers reached 1.31 million, and the number of terrestrial DMB users reached 9.69 million, giving a total of 11 million mobile broadcast TV users in Korea (I am using the term "users" for T-DMB since it is a free-to-air service, and not a subscription service).

Monthly sales of T-DMB devices are in the range of 400-500K a month, meaning that by the end of March the number of T-DMB users alone will pass the 10 million mark. S-DMB growth is not reported in the article, but it seems that S-DMB has stalled in Korea since similar numbers were reported at the end of 2007.

2 comments:

Itai Frenkel said...

Hi Dror,

I'm having a hard time following the alphabet soup. How does the T-DMB relate to DVB-T (refering to http://ovidiomichelangeli.blogspot.com/2008/05/dvb-t-for-mobile-tv.html ).

Is this a "retro" to the 80s, where TV is free again ? or does these digital feeds need subscriptions ?

Regards,
Itai

Dror Gill said...

T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcast) is a Korean standard for mobile broadcast TV, based the DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast), available mainly in Korea and offered for free.

DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcast - Terrestrial) is a European standard for digital TV broadcast to regular TV sets, available mainly in Europe, and offered mostly for free.

DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) is a derivative of DVB-T that has been optimized for reception in mobile devices (low power consumption, high mobility). It is available mainly in Italy and some other countries in Europe, and typically offered as a subscription service.

Technology improvements in digital TV receiver chips and antennas have recently enabled the reception of regular DVB-T broadcasts in mobile devices, so now users can watch high-quality TV broadcasts on their mobile devices even in areas where a DVB-H service is not available, using DVB-T which is typically free.

Hope that clears the pictures,

Dror.