The current generation of video formats on mobile telephones looks likely to be displaced by the arrival of new mobile platforms supporting higher screen definition and the ability of mobiles to drive TV screens.
According to a new report from Rethink Research Associates, mobile handsets will assume the role of a portable personal video recorder (PVR) over the coming years, with capacities of today’s living room based devices, creating a new era of disruption.
On the back of this, Rethink predicts that a minimum of 164 million TV capable handsets will be shipped worldwide by 2011, with the potential to double this figure depending on how operators and broadcasters respond.
The report warns however that the mobile video market will splinter into tiers, with some advertising based, some subscription based and others free and designed purely to bring customers to new cellular platforms. Rethink also expects a battle between broadcasters and cellular operators to control the new market.
Finally, the report states that the “very fabric of the global advertiser eco-system to be at stake, with global advertising revenues shared over too many, unsustainable business models. Eventually there will have to be fatalities.”
In the US, eMarketer projects that 3 million US consumers will watch TV programming on their mobile phones in 2006, up from 1.2 million in 2005. By 2009, the analyst expects there will be 15 million video viewers, an estimated 6.2% of total mobile subscribers (see US Mobile TV Subscriptions To Hit 15 Million By 2009).
Meanwhile, Juniper Research predicts worldwide mobile television revenues to increase rapidly before the end of the decade, peaking at $7.6 billion in 2010, up from an estimated $136 million this year (see Mobile TV Set For Massive Revenue Growth).
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