Mobile TV wars

Thomas Husson | August 22, 2007, 12:42 PM

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have constantly been arguing that mobile TV's main inhibitor was not only the fragmentation of technologies available, but also the fact that significant issues on business models need to be ironed out by the various stakeholders. See here and here.

So, now that the EU commission is fostering DVB-H as a unique standard, does that mean this is the end of the game ?

Well, well, well. Some players are still pushing for other alternatives. France Telecom recently and surprisingly insisted on a DVB tuner directly embedded in mobile phones (if DTT or "TNT" as we call it here is to be mass-market, why not capitalize on the existing investment?) while NRJ, a radio station also owning a couple of TV stations is promoting T-DMB. Not sure the latter will win the race, but at least it make full sense for NRJ given that T-DMB is going to be the standard for digital radio in France and because Towercast (a NRJ subsidiary) is trying to compete with TDF, the main broadcaster network operator.

But again, whatever the technology, we will hear that sport live events will foster the uptake of live mobile TV.

We heard this story for the Football Championship in 2006, for the Rugby Worldcup (to start in the coming weeks), and we will hear again in 2008 with the UEFA football cup and with the Olympics in China.

I think it is a very interesting case to raise awareness of mobile TV, an interesting event to associate your brand with as well as nice way to upsell and cross sell other mobile services. However, I truly believe sport is a social event you want to share live with friends on a big screen. So, if you watch at it on a mobile phone it will essentially be because you are blocked in the office or in a traffic jam or because you just want to catch up and see the highlights (which is not live TV).

Anyway, the French launch has been postponed again to summer 08 and the main reason is because of difficulties on revenue and risk sharing between all stakeholders. Will mobile advertising finance the network? Certainly not. Will a paid model only work: certainly not. Will content owners share risks to produce made-for-mobile content at this stage? Certainly not. So the right mix is still difficult to achieve.

The reality of mobile TV will still be on 3G for some time and I thus can only disagree with one of our competitors (which I won't name here) saying that broadcasting mobile TV revenues will outperfom unicast revenues as early as 2008 !