Report: U.S. to take lead in mobile TV market

Annual consumer spending on mobile broadcast TV services is expected to surpass $6.6 billion worldwide by 2012, according to a new report from Jupiter Research.
The service is expected to be in the hands of more than 120 million users in at least 40 countries by then, a sharp jump from the less than 12 million users today, the research firm reported. Additionally, the firm said DVB-H will be the dominant transmission standard-however, significant technological and regulatory hurdles will have to be overcome before services are widely adopted.
“While the quasi-mandation of DVB-H by the European Commission is a huge boost to that standard, it does create uncertainty in the minds of those who might regard other technologies as more cost effective and might ultimately be counterproductive as a measure to promote mobile TV per se,” the report’s author Windsor Holden said.
“The key to the take-up of services such as SMS and, of applications such as cameraphones, has been their ubiquity: everyone can send an SMS, most people can now take a picture with their handset. If companies are serious about achieving widespread adoption of mobile TV, it is essential for chipsets to filter down very rapidly from the top of the range handsets into the mass market models so that everyone has the opportunity, at least, to sample mobile TV services.”
The firm also concluded that the United States will become the largest single market for mobile broadcast TV services in 2012, followed by Japan and Italy. Italy currently reigns supreme in the burgeoning mobile TV space, with three commercially launched services.
And while the industry seems equally divided over the potential for advertising to subsidize end costs to consumers, Jupiter Research determined that ad revenue will contribute to a growing proportion of overall mobile TV revenues, but most services will still rely heavily on subscriptions and pay-per view charges.