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270 Million with TV Functionality on Phones by 2009

29th November , 2004

Europe : According to the latest visiongain report " Mobile TV: Market Analysis and Forecasts 2004-2009", Mobile phones and broadcast television are two of the most influential and popular consumer technologies of the electronics age. The merging of the mobile technology and broadcasting television has produced Mobile TV.

The concept of mobile TV is the ability to watch live, direct broadcasts on mobile handsets. This potentially could be one of the most disruptive technologies on the horizon for mobile operators and could dramatically reduce mobile data revenues. It is questionable whether it is worth paying to download just a clip of a soccer goal over 3G when you can watch the whole match.

However, one of the most interesting fields to be emerging in the mobile space is the concept of mobile TV.

Television is one of the few services that have not yet appeared on the mobile phone screen in a broad sense. The ability to watch movies, news, sport and TV shows is seen as one of the main offerings and differentiators of the 3G networks that European mobile operators spent billions of Euros on. Visiongain believes mobile TV has the potential to become one of the rare successes in the non-voice segment, emerging as the next popular phone concept, after standard voice and text messaging formats.

The new visiongain report "Mobile TV: Market Analysis and Forecasts 2004-2009" details how trend-setting carriers in Japan and South Korea are looking to satellites for broadcasting delivery of TV and even digital music content to handsets. However it is not just these two innovative markets, other forward-looking mobile operators and manufacturers in Europe have also started trials of the technology.

TV phones capable of capturing analogue signals have been around for a while, but the addition of mobile digital media broadcasting (DMB) technology is what will allow Mobile TV to come into its own. Samsung and Nokia are among those handset manufacturers that have announced phones that will be able to handle digital TV signals, and both are expected to be on the market in 2005. These devices with built-in digital TV receivers, to be released by the world's largest and third largest manufacturers, promise to provide a boost for handset demand, and are just two of a plethora of phones that will hit the market in the coming years. visiongain forecasts that if Mobile TV is priced and packaged correctly, there could be up to 270 million subscribers worldwide with TV functionality on their mobile phones by 2009.

Visiongain believes Mobile TV has the potential to become a success in the non-voice segment. Indeed, the ability to watch movie trailers, news, sport and TV show clips is seen as one of the main offerings and differentiators of the 3G networks that European mobile operators spent billions of Euro on. It is true that 3G operators hold a first-mover advantage in providing TV content, but ``real`` mobile TV will come into its own with digital, multicast technology, which offers higher quality at a lower cost.

Users may receive "free-to-air" services, perhaps paid for by advertising, which could bypass the mobile operator altogether. However, the most likely charging scenarios of subscription or pay-per-view will be easier to implement in partnership with the mobile operator who already has the billing relationship with the end-user. This puts additional pressure on billing vendors to support solutions such as this.

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