Mobile TV, an Industry Already In Crisis?

Although clearly in its babyhood the European mobile television industry is already in crisis, BT Movio's recent move to discontinue its service and that supporting Virgin's Lobster telephone less than a twelvemonth after launch having sold less than 10,000 handsets. Perhaps it's a engineering job as recommended by the European Union, who recently approved DVB-H as the common pan-European engineering for mobile TV.

There are of course of study cardinal differences between DVB-H technology and the DMB technology as used by BT Movio, however perhaps the cardinal issue facing the mobile telecasting industry is one of consumer demand.

There are two, connected and as yet unsolved issues facing the mass consumer acceptance of mobile TV, being: content and usability.

The re-broadcasting of standard tellurian television over mobile television will simply not be compelling adequate to drive mass consumer acceptance at meaningful terms points. This point is directly connected with usability, simple analysis of the manner in which consumers utilize their mobile telephone today shows that unless the consumer is sitting down they don't actually look at their phone.

By public presentation to date, one experiences that the mobile television industry necessitates to carry on rather more than independent and in-depth consumer research before making investings of 100s of billions of dollars into engineering – even though the European Committee believes it's a good pan-European standard.

Furthermore, it is not clear whether the mobile television industry will be driven by mobile operators, mobile practical web operators (MVNO) (such as Virgin and BT) or broadcasters (such as Sky).

Written by Saint Andrew White, Spouse at Piran Partners LLP, leading advisers to the European telecommunications industry. For additional information and our achromatic paper on this topic visit our website.

(c) Piran Partners LLP, 2007.