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.

Korea's Satellite Mobile TV Calls for Help

The world's only satellite-based mobile broadcast TV service is in deep trouble. According to an article in the Korea Times, TU Media which operates the S-DMB service in Korea has accumulated a debt that will reach 270 Billion Won (about $270M) by the end of this year. There are 1.2M subscribers to the service, but their number hasn't grown since this summer.

One of the main obstacles for the service is regulation: The S-DMB service is not allowed to broadcast the main Korean terrestrial broadcast channels KBS, MBC, SBS and EBS. TU Media's request from the government to ease these regulatory restrictions has been unanswered, and their plea for additional funding from SKT, TU Media's largest shareholder, has also been declined. According to the Korea Times, there are reports that SKT may even withdraw from the S-DMB business in the near future.

Korean S-DMB Subscribers Near 1M

According to an article published in techworld, Korean's S-DMB service has signed up 950,000 subscribers so far. This figure was quoted by Young-Kil Suh, president and CEO of TU-Media, the SKT subsidiary which operates Korea's satellite mobile TV service. Mr. Kuh also claims that the average TV viewing time per subscriber is 62 minutes per day. This is well above the numbers witnessed in mobile broadcast TV trials around the world, which typically amount to 15-20 minutes a day. Commercial cellular TV services in Europe have reported much lower viewing times, of 2-3 minutes per day. This figure was quoted in an article in The Register, titled "Telefonica admits customers don't understand mobile TV".

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.