Mobile TV stands in next to last place, in terms of popularity, among all existing mobile services, according to the Chief Marketing Officer’s Council (CMO).
In a forum at last week’s 3GSM World Congress, the CMO revealed that global market penetration for mobile TV currently stands at 7%, behind gambling at 8% but ahead of video sharing at 4%.
According to David Willan of Circle Research, who carried out research on the platform for the GSM Association, mobile TV has only average potential.
Willan noted that three of the four most popular mobile services involve text messaging, with 81% of all users surveyed by Circle saying that they used SMS.
He added that the strongest future for mobile services, apart from texting, is for e-mail, with mobile TV coming in eleventh behind gambling in a rundown of the services with the most future potential.
The Circle research revealed that the opinion as to the best business model for mobile TV varies globally. People across Europe and Asia said that it should be advertising funded with 58% and 57% of all respondents saying that it should be free to view. In North America, 54% of those surveyed prefer paying for advertising free content.
Also speaking at the 3GSM World Congress, Analysys said that its own research suggests that whilst there is growing evidence pointing to a latent consumer demand for mobile TV services, it is not clear that this will translate to the expected level of demand for broadcast mobile TV.
Jim Morrish, Analysys senior consultant,said: “In essence, the industry is stuck in the traditional ‘technology driven’ approach, whereas consumers simply want to watch televisual content on the move, without consideration of the underlying technology used to deliver that content.”
In December, a report from GfK Technology said that 70% of active mobile TV subscribers in the UK use the service at least once a wee, with the service showing good potential for growth (see UK Mobile TV Showing Growth Potential).
Meanwhile, a recent report from eMarketer said that US mobile marketing and advertising looks set to grow massively in 2007 (see US Mobile Marketing To Grow In 2007).
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