When it comes to mobile TV, Asian countries South Korea and Japan dominate the market.

According to analyst firm Berg Insight, these markets account for 78% of all mobile TV viewers around the globe or 38 million out of 49 million viewers. These markets are way ahead of North America and Europe.

On the other hand, the interest level of mobile users in the UK remains low. In a separate study conducted by Continental Research, only 1% use mobile TV in the last 12 months while 3% are willing to try this service next year.

As mentioned recently, some technical glitches are added problems to this industry. Aside from inadequate structures, current viewers encounter problems watching because of the mobile phone screen size is limited to the type of phone. This problem also constrains the content that must be included in this service.

The solution to this problem is really simple but very difficult to implement. Mobile carriers should offer this service free of charge. According to Tim Barber, author of this research:

To promote take-up of mobile TV, networks should consider advertiser-funded content to enable customers to access the service (at least initially) for no fee at all. This would encourage people to sign up to the service, and download the necessary software or settings to their handsets so that if paid-for services are subsequently introduced handsets will already be ready technically to use the service.

Naturally, service providers should target the teen and young adult markets, particularly males, because they are considered as the early adopters of this new technology.

Via cellular-news

Mobile TV is another promising newcomer in the telco industry plagued with technical problems for the past 5 years. Way back in 2001, analysts forecasted this new service to be available within 20 years!

Today, technology is no longer a problem and consumer preferences are also evolving, says ABI Research. Its survey has revealed that people are actually watching mobile TV in their bedrooms, for 40 minutes at a time. So many content providers are now thinking about hour-long episodes of prime-time shows. This is a significant shift from the earlier preference for 2-minute, bite-sized morsels and mobisodes.

On the other hand, the looming problem now is inadequate infrastructure. According to Rod Tiede, CEO of a leading video technology innovator, Broadcast International:

“The market for video-enabled cell phones is poised to explode, but the infrastructure for delivering high-quality video to those small screens needs to change. Video is extremely bandwidth-intensive; right now, the chokepoint in the infrastructure is video compression technology. Currently, video viewing over wireless devices requires at least 300K in bandwidth. That number needs to come down by close to 80% in order to make video delivery to cell phones practical and cost-effective for large numbers of viewers.”

Via tvovernet.net