By the end of 2011, nearly half a billion people will be watching TV on their mobile phone handsets, according to a new study from IMS Research.
The research, entitled
Mobile TV – A Complete Analysis of the Global Market, forecasts that mobile TV delivered over the mobile phone data network should experience strong growth and build on its early lead in the marketplace.
However, the research goes on to say that beginning early in 2010, mobile phone network-based mobile TV subscriptions will be overtaken by even quicker growth in digital broadcast services. By then, more than half of the world’s mobile TV subscribers will receive their video via a mobile digital broadcast service.
One of the report’s authors, Stephen Froehlich, said: “Given the right conditions, mobile TV has the potential to spread from one customer to the next like few technologies before it.
“If providers effectively supply compelling content, quality reception, and affordable, attractive phones, then every new mobile TV subscriber can become a mobile TV evangelist. However, to make their customers into product evangelists, mobile TV service providers and their partners must invest enough in infrastructure and technology to enable both wide population coverage and good indoor reception.”
Recent research from Knowledge Networks claimed that 50% of people who subscribe to mobile phone video services in the US, and 30% of video iPod owners, never use their devices for watching video (see Ofcom Plans New Public Service Channel To Rival BBC).
However, research from Quaestor claimed that 87% of children would like to watch television on their mobile phones (see Almost 90% of Children Want Mobile TV).
A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that teens and young adults, who are the generation most likely to be the early adopters of mobile television, have not yet fully embraced the medium, with only 14% of teenagers saying that they wanted to watch television on a mobile phone, and 17% saying that they would view programs on an iPod.
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