ScreenDigest figures the prospects are bright for mobile TV and despite generating revenues of only €169 million in 2006, the researchers reckon that TV will overtake both music and gaming in the mobile content space by 2011 as operators focus on the mass-market for growth. Read the rest of the article for more detail (free subscription may be required to read the article).
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Research company Infonetics reckons there'll be 46m mobile TV subscribers by 2010 with the first spike in traffic being around the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and Asia Pacific taking the lead in mobile video uptake.
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IBM also writes what the IPTV and mobile TV advertising landscape might look like and is positive at the prospect of targeted ads to users.
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And talking of advertising, 118118 is planning a series of mobile clips of their iconic 1970s runner characters as part of their current viral marketing campaign. This is part of a wider refocus to create 118118 as a destination web and mobile site to include sports, entertainment and celebrity news. The company will also allow users to upload their own videos to the revamped portal (which doesn't seem to be live yet).
As it happens, you can already claim ringtones and wallpapers from 118118 by clicking on the mobile phone image on the home page or by going to www.118118.com from your mobile phone and scrolling to the end to '118118 ringtones'. The mobile site is slow to load and I'm unable to preview the ringtones. And it's not obvious which link to press to claim your ringtone and what's even worse, is that there's no handset or network operator recognition so you have to rely on extremely clunky dropdown menus in order to tell them what kind of phone you have. It's also rather thoughtless to have a 16kb logo for those folks who are paying per kilobyte. This is especially disappointing for a company purporting to be mobile friendly. Let's hope they get that fixed in the next iteration.
Wow. The prospect of mobile tv taking over in poularity form mobile games seems hard to fathom at this stage of the game. As someone who has never seen TV on mobile phone, I can only assume that it is not hugely favourable as an alternative to real tv, even on the run. Perhaps dedicated channels that appeal to the format (and interactive maybe?).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Carl.
ReplyDeleteWith mobile it's not necessarily about alternatives it's about 'as well as'. SMS hasn't replace email, and wap hasn't replace web and mobile games haven't replaced console games.
Research has shown that people watch mobile TV in addition to normal TV and a lot of that consumption is at home as opposed to on the move.
When we move from analogue to digital TV and have TV chips in our phone that give digital TV quality using the broadcast signal, it's going to be a no-brainer provided the price is right and that it's pre-installed on the phone. At the click of one button, you can watch whatever programmes you want, when you want.
Three in the UK already makes a very nice living out of video downloads, Rok TV is doing well for off-portal TV, Virgin Lobster has had reasonable sales and Sky on Vodafone has a very healthy number of paid subscribers on mobile TV.. and that's when it's using the operator network rather than the digital broadcast signal so the user experience isn't as good as it could or will be.
You have to remember that most of us thought cameraphones were a completely crazy idea. I, for one, never thought I'd use one and now I can't imagine not having one. I think TV on mobile could become just like that. The demand isn't necessarily there, but everyone understands TV and once it's just there, people will use it.
Well, I think so anyway!