The bumpy road to success for mobile TV

Every year since the World Cup in 2006, companies have been proclaiming that ‘this year will be the year for mobile TV.’ Yet despite the optimism, Mobile TV doesn’t really seem to have taken the world by storm.
Speaking at CommunicAsia in Singapore this week, Stephane Palomba head of sales for Speedcast, a firm which enables broadband transfer of Internet and multimedia via satellite, explained why this was so, and why he still believes Asia is the market where mobile TV can really take off.
The first and foremost reason mobile TV isn’t popular yet, said Palomba, is that until very recently and still in most parts of the world, the technology simply isn’t there. “Watching TV over GPRS is a pain,” he declared, noting it was almost unwatchable and that people wanted mobile TV to be of a similar quality to the service they had at home.

Massive 3G deployments in India and throughout Asia, he said, were only just starting to blanket the world, and it was 3G for all that would really kick-start the mobile TV take –off.
Another restriction to mobile TV, said Palomba, is that mobile phones with TV capabilities are still for the most part rather expensive, which is a massively limiting factor, but as the price of these devices come down, mobile TV too will see greater uptake.
It’s not just the infrastructure and hardware standing as a roadblock in mobile TV’s way, explained Palomba, noting that content also needed to be more targeted to a mobile audience.
“Mobile TV is very different, very Niche. You cannot watch Titanic on a mobile… I challenge anyone to try it, even on TV it’s difficult,” he joked, adding seriously, “the content is completely different.”
Palomba recommended carriers and mobile TV providers do some research into what works well for Mobile TV, suggesting music videos, news and sports as good places to start.
Music especially was a mobile TV market with all kinds of revenue potential, starting with consumers watching the music video itself, and then maybe even paying to download it, or buy the wallpaper of the singer for their phones.
“Customers need to be consumers,” Palomba noted, emphasizing the potential integration for mobile advertising.
Throwing out some projected figures, Palomba said there were indications revenues for mobile TV could reach nine billion dollars in 2013, from subscriptions, and that it could reach 566 million people in that timeframe.
Plugging Speedcast, Palomba said he believed firms could see huge cost savings in terms of backhaul by broadcasting to mobile over satellite and could even reach more subscribers. Broadcast IP TV services, he said, and reach a mass market. The goal, after all, is to have a mass market business.
Palomba warned, however, “you can have the best solution in the world, if you don’t have the right content it won’t work. Also if you have the best content but not the right solution, it also won’t work. You need to bundle the two and come up with the best overall package.”