September 04, 2008
Mobile TV Users Doubling Since Last Year
By Eve Sullivan, TMCnet Editor
The three-year-old Mobile TV market is entering its mass market phase with the worldwide number of users expected to double from 26.3 million at the end of 2007 to 51.6 million at the end of 2008.
This prediction was made in an issue of the quarterly TeleAnalytics Mobile TV Tracking Service, on the basis of monthly data for all commercial Mobile TV networks since the technology started in May 2005.
The issue analyzes the complete set of Q1-08 adoption figures, summarizes the key Mobile TV developments up until the end of July 2008, and provides detailed, short-term end-08 projections for all Mobile TV metrics of interest.
According to the metrics, the Q1-08 Mobile TV new adds exceeded 28 percent of the end Q4-08 Mobile TV user count and Q1-08 was the first quarter where more than 10 million Mobile TV devices were sold. The short-term predictions of the issue show an end-08 Mobile TV user count of 51.6 million, a value that is within 1.5 percent of the 2008 figure determined by TeleAnalytics’ long-term Mobile TV forecasts for the 2007-11 period.
In Q1-08, Europe still only had the Italian Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) market trying to compete with the exploding markets of Korea and Japan. The Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) ended the quarter with 33 times more Mobile TV users than Europe. DVB-H’s market share in terms of Mobile TV handsets sold worldwide fell to 3.3 percent.
In Q1-08, in the U.S., FLO still had to rely only on the Verizon (News - Alert) retail product which, as previously analyzed, failed to deliver subscriber counts in line with the investments made. AT&T finally launched in May.
The third Japanese wave arrived in November 2007 and for the next six months, the One-Seg monthly market share among all handsets sold in Japan only mildly fluctuated around the 60 percent mark. Japan will finish the year with more than 32 percent of its total mobile subscriber basis having been penetrated by One-Seg.
The Korean Mobile TV explosion continues. In Q1-08, T-DMB reversed the slight quarterly decrease of its new adds figures and S-DMB rose out of its pre-Christmas stagnation to add 47,000 new subs.
In Q1-08, the growth engine of the Italian DVB-H market, 3-Italy, added just about 15 percent of the number of DVB-H subs it added a year ago. The issue analyzes both the challenges of the Italian DVB-H market and the new 3-Italy strategy introduced at the end of Q2-08.
In Austria, the DVB civil war is fought exclusively among the country’s MNOs and an Austrian MNO became the first ever Mobile TV retailer to publicly complain about the quality of the DVB-H product it sells. Early adoption figures suggest an annualized population penetration rate in the 0.4-0.7 percent range.
The issue also analyzes the Mobile TV markets in Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, China and Brazil. For more information on Issue No. 5 of the TeleAnalytics Mobile TV Tracking Service and other related publications, visit http://www.teleanalytics.com/PDFS/ISSUE5.pdf
Eve Sullivan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Eve's articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Eve Sullivan
