Mobile TV?
Published by David Evans on May 6th, 2008
Filed Under:
Digital Media, Mobile, New Business Models, Technology, Economics
Ok, all of you are probably sick of us writing on mobile. But I thought the recent article in the New York Times Mobile TV Spreading in Europe and to the US was pretty interesting.
The Swiss it appears are going crazy watching TV on their little screens—40,000 a day which might actually be a big number there. Now, my colleague Ms. Webster, naysayer as she is, can’t imagine anyone watching TV for any length of time on these little screens. But we Video IPod devotees know that if you have a good enough small screen, don’t have access to a big screen, and have better content available to you than on your large screen, a tiny screen isn’t so bad.
Stuck on the train, or waiting for a plane, the 100 second clips playing in Switzerland sound like pretty good entertainment to me. I’m less sure the mobile phone angle is going to catch on in the US—it makes a lot more sense for largely urban commuters in Europe than the suburban ones in the US and the last thing American drivers need, especially in Boston, is another distraction. That said, mobile content on mobile telephones—while it still faces significant hurdles—is well within our grasps. Most importantly, all of this will be supported by mobile advertising which will become another huge part of the online ad biz. What do you think, American readers, is there mobile television in your future?
Well I’m not an American reader, but I can say there’s one pretty serious roadblock to any mobile TV takeup in the US: the networks, for the lack of a better technical term, suck. Streaming video content of decent quality requires a fairly good-quality signal at all time. I’m sure most people having used cellphones in the US will agree that the reception, well, could be better most of the time.
Broadcast technologies like DVB-H are another story but the short-term future of DVB-H in particular is not looking very hot anywhere.
As for mobile advertising and it becoming “huge”, well, it depends on what you count as huge. If you believe the optimistic forecasts, it’ll be a ~$15B business globally in four years. Put that figure into the proper context: mobile communications will be around a ~$850B business in the same timeframe - so operators looking at mobile advertising to save their falling ARPUs are better off looking elsewhere.