Mobile TV makes a comeback

Mobile TV is gaining favor in Asia, with cellcos, broadcasters and vendors exploring different digital broadcasting technologies with trials and commercial rollouts.

Japan is the leader in broadcasting mobile TV, with over 20 million handsets equipped with TV receivers being shipped since 1-Seg, the free-to-air service based on the ISDB-T standard, was launched in April 2006. Following suited was South Korea, which has sold over eight million T-DMB devices, according to ARCchart.

A handful of operators/broadcasters in several other Asian countries like India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines also have launched commercial services based on DVB-H, the standard endorsed by EU for mobile broadcast TV service in Europe. Philippine mobile operator Smart Communications last July launched the nation's first commercial mobile TV broadcasting service, branded myTV, in partnership with broadcast company 360media Corp. The service, which is 488 pesos ($11.0) per month, was launched with support of two DVB-H-capable handsets - the Nokia N92 and N77.

At the same time, mobile operators, broadcasters and pay-TV services providers in countries like Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan are conducting trails on either DVB-H or Qualcomm's MediaFlo technology, which has been deployed by Verizon Wireless and AT&T to offer commercial mobile TV service on a subscription basis.

In China commercials trials on CMMB - the homegrown standard backed by State Administration of Radio, Film & Television (SARFT) - began last month in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, despite the fact that the government has not yet decided which technology to adopt as the official standard. During the trials end-users are provided with seven free-to-air channels on news, sports, movies and Olympics coverage, and the SARFT plans to extend the trials to five other cities before the Beijing Olympics in August.

The right price

Despite recent progress in many markets, market observers admit that the broadcast mobile TV is still in its nascent stage.

For one thing, most mobile TV offerings are still in the test stage, and operators are looking for the right business models to justify the significant cost of network deployment and to determine what content end-users want and their willingness to pay.

The good news is that early evidence and numerous surveys show that clearly there is demand for mobile TV services and consumers are willing to pay for the content. The question, however, is at what price point are they willing to pay‾ If the price point is set too high and users will be disinclined to subscribe, but if it's too low service providers will run the risk of failing to extract maximum value from their service.

While the answer may vary from market to market, experience in Europe perhaps can provide some indicative reference to Asian operators.

Arnab Chaudhuri, regional head of business development, mobile TV and video service for Asia Pacific at Nokia Siemens Networks, said results of the commercial rollouts and trials of DVB-H conducted in Europe last year show that consumers were willing to pay for mobile TV service at a price point ranging from $6 to $16.

Chaudhuri suggests that the level in Asia is likely in the range of $5 to $8.