The number of Mobile TV users has reached 20 million globally, and will rise to over two billion in 2013, according to a new report from Telecom Trends International.
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Mobile TV: Executing the Vision report shows that the vast majority of users currently access free-to-air mobile TV, but pay-TV will catch on as high-quality made-for-TV programming becomes widely available on subscription-based channels.
Naqi Jaffery, president and chief analyst, Telecom Trends International, said that just as mobile voice is becoming the primary means of voice communication, mobile TV will eventually become the primary means of accessing television.
The momentum generated by mobile TV has surprised many industry observers, Jaffery added.
Despite the multiplicity of standards and lack of uniform frequency allocation, mobile TV is making a tremendous impact on the marketplace, he believes.
According to the report, the market is seeing the evolution of multi-network architecture with the same device supporting more than one standard. However, the report says, DVB-H has emerged as the de facto mobile TV standard globally.
The market is seeing the convergence of out-of-band broadcast and in-band multicast technologies into one seamless network architecture, the report says. Besides providing high-quality television reception, such architecture enables interactivity that will give a significant boost to mobile commerce.
Recently, MediaTel Group’s seminar on the ‘Future of TV’, panellists claimed that mobile TV had had a disappointing start, with take-up of the platform less than expected and broadcasters seemingly disillusioned with mobile operators (see Disappointing Start For Mobile TV).
However, a report from Juniper Research forecast that worldwide annual consumer spending on mobile broadcast TV services was expected to exceed $6.6 billion by 2012.
Nearly 120 million mobile users in more than 40 countries are expected to receive broadcast TV services by 2012, compared to less than 12 million in 2007, with DVB-H the dominant transmission standard.
However, the report cautions that services face significant technological and regulatory hurdles both prior to launch and as they bid to build a critical mass of subscribers (see Global Consumer Spending On Mobile TV To Increase).
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