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Mobile TV Newsletter: Mobile TV to overtake music and games by 2011
May 2007
Hello and welcome to the May issue of the Mobile TV Forum Newsletter! Our main topic this month is the new and interesting market forecast data for mobile TV business.
Mobile TV revenues to ramp up, says Screen Digest
Market research company Screen Digest suggests that mobile TV will enjoy significant revenue in the coming years. According to their new study, by 2011 there will be 130 million mobile TV users globally, and the global consumer revenue for mobile TV services will be worth 4.7 bn ($6.3 bn). Of this amount, mobile broadcast TV will account for 3.3 bn and cellular unicast TV 1.4 bn.
Approximately 90% of mobile TV revenue will be based on monthly subscription fees, whereas pay-per-view and pay-per-day models will play only a minor role.
The market is expected to grow in all areas and regions. In 2011, it is anticipated that mobile TV will generate almost 2 bn in Europe, 1.8 bn in North America and 1 bn in South Korea and Japan.
The consumer market for mobile TV services in 2006 amounted to 170 m, divided quite evenly between European and Asian (South Korea and Japan) markets, with the North American market reaching only a minor share. Looking at these figures, North America will witness the fastest growth in the future.
Mobile TV's revenue potential is greater than that of games or even music due to the mass market nature of the product, believes Screen Digest Mobile TV specialist, Ronan de Renesse. Further, he anticipates that customers will subscribe to simulcast channels that is, simultaneous broadcasts of conventional TV programming.
The scope of the study undertaken by Screen Digest focused on consumer revenues. In addition to these, there will be other revenue sources for mobile TV, such as advertising.
For more information about this research, please visit the Screen Digest website: www.screendigest.com
EUs Reding wants DVB-H
Viviane Reding, European Union Commissioner for Telecommunications, continues to stress the importance of having a single mobile TV standard for all of Europe.
We need to build economies of scale rapidly and give certainty to developers of technologies and networks, said Reding in her speech at the EICTA meeting in Brussels earlier this month. I am in favor of a robust and proven single open standard DVB-H.
Reding will present a communication on mobile TV before the summer. According to Reding, she will use this communication to either mandate a single standard immediately or to give the industry a little longer to agree on a common standard probably until the end of 2007.
Redings speech can be downloaded from the Commissions web site (http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/reding/docs/speeches/brussels_20070510.pdf)
Finlands mobile TV services finally launch Content rights issues solved
Finland mobile broadcast operator, Digita, opened their DVB-H network in four major Finnish cities last December. However, due to content rights issues, major broadcasters had to wait until mid-May before they could provide channels for mobile transmissions.
The two leading commercial broadcasters have now launched their flagship channels, MTV3 and Channel Four, on the DVB-H network. (MTV3 is the most watched channel in Finland.) The public service broadcaster YLE is yet to provide a schedule for their own mobile TV launch.
The service will initially be free-of-charge to consumers in order to attract a decent viewer base.
The content rights issue that was responsible for delaying the start of mobile TV related to defining the how much compensation content owners were entitled to for mobile TV transmission. In Finland, unlike the most other countries, content owners have traditionally charged broadcasters based on the length of the program in minutes. This minute-based model may have worked with traditional television, but will soon become obsolete in a world where mobile TV and IPTV, among others, are changing the way TV is distributed and consumed, thus making it difficult to estimate the value of a program-minute.
Content owners associations and broadcasters are now finalizing agreements for a new, revenue-based charge model that will be applied to both traditional and mobile TV. This revenue-based model commonly used in major markets is better suited to the needs of both content owners and broadcasters today.
Happy watching!
Timo Argillander
Editor
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