Mobile TV to generate $10B in revenues by ’13

Mobile TV services are expected to generate revenues of $1.5 billion this year and increase to more than $10 billion in 2013, according to a new study from Informa Telecoms & Media.
Currently, mobile TV revenues primarily come from subscription fees, but the firm expects that trend to switch to an advertising business over time. By 2013, nearly half of revenues will come from advertising, predicts Informa.
South Korea and Japan are expected to continue growing the strongest for the next two years. Europe is not expected to experience rapid growth in the market until 2009 despite some pockets of success. The United States will lag the rest of the world in mobile TV adoption while the market works out standards and technology battles, said Informa.
“As the owner of the marketing and billing relationship with subscribers, operators are in the best position to offer mobile TV services,” said Shailendra Pandey, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “It seems that a good approach for mobile operators will be to start with a free-to-air business model which also involves minimum capital investment. Once user uptake of services starts to grow, operators can then think of developing new revenue models that can be established on top of the free-to-air content platform.”