I had the opportunity yesterday to hear a presentation by Bill Blass, V.P. of Forward Thinking of Mobile Company at MobileCo123 about key trends that will explode soon in North America. He concentrated on mobile tv.
This has got marathon type legs for the mobile industry, it appears to me. Yes, I watched some highlights prepared for reporters on 3 different 3G phones. The reports on those experiences comes over the next few days here.
"Technology is ready, and most bandwidth issues are being resolved quickly," said Blass when I interviewed him later, "but the industry needs to have quality and innovative programming to get consumers to use and demand mobile tv in abundance."
Someone's watching a World Cup clip on their mobile phone near you now!
Highlights from today's World Cup game between Italy and Czechoslovakia are available to mobile phone users throughout the game and after. Mobile phone operators have been using the World Cup event as a key launching pad to introduce mobile tv. In particular T-Mobile in Germany, an official sponsor of the Cup, is leading the way. Take a look at a sample clip and quality here.
A BBC story cites an Informa Research report which predicts that $300 million in revenue will be generated worldwide just by downloads of World Cup clips this year. Programming by U.S. and British firms are now in the works for mobile tv. Popular shows such as Lost, 24 and Coronation Street and others are now ready for mobile and more are on the way. The key to revenue growth is content which has devoted fan bases, or should "fanatical" bases.
In South Korea and Japan, where they have had mobile tv for over a year, many watch up to 90 minutes of tv per day on their mobiles, says the Informa report.
(Handset and user image here)
When is Mobile TV going to see widespread usage?
There are others who are not so optimistic about the immediate widespread appeal of television on mobile phones and even Blass and Dave McQueen of Informa agree.
There will need to be an upgrade of phone equipment. Penetration will be painfully slow, it appears now. Estimates now show that by 2010, only 10% of handsets will be capable of watching mobile tv. Penetration could occur much quicker if manufacturers are able to deal with battery life issues and pricing. The incentive pricing from bandwidth providers will have a major impact on the speed of market penetration, said Blass.
Just as consumers saw with VHS and DVD there will be technology choices. S-DMB and T-DMB technology are most common because of the Asian penetration now, but Infoma predicts that after 2010, the DVB-H tv technology will be the standard in about two-thirds of phones, wth MediaFLO to be used in the remainder of handsets. "Beta" anyone?
The successes to date of television and mobile phone convergence to date have come from the innovative ways have involved watchers with mobile phones. Mobile phone SMS from has been wildly popular for shows on television like Idol that involve audience voting or sporting events that are selecting top players. SMS Chat to TV to get immediate viewer response has also been highly effective. The industry has seen a windfall of revenue from these uses as the SMS charges are always higher than standard rates. I know I'd pay for mobile TV programming options that allowed me to get an exclusive camera in a 24 show or additional exclusive footage of Survivor, and so would my friends. Exclusive content for mobile tv has the potential to push growth much faster than current predictions.
I also see vast untapped potential in educational and learning uses for mobile tv, both for highly specialized and also the popular content already on specialty channels, but I'm sure I don't have to tell television industry content providers that..
Tommorrow and through the Week: Rating the Mobile TV Capable Phones and Provider Networks-Our Own Tests
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Now if I could find an RSS feed for this for easy browsing. 
