Mobile TV Viewers Set To Skyrocket, Gartner Forecasts 488 Million By 2010

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Research firm Gartner is bullish about the future for mobile TV and estimates an eightfold increase in the number of viewers over the next three years. It reckons the figure will rise from today’s 60 million to 488 million by 2010. This post at South Africa’s MyADSL.com delves a bit deeper to see if this growth translates into profits. The sobering verdict: “That will happen only if operators can attract enough subscribers to pique the interest of advertisers.”

Indeed, user ambivalence about watching TV on the move means there are no straightforward answers about uptake. To reach critical mass operators will need to be clever about how they package the service. Some indication of the strategy operators should follow comes from Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi. The post quotes her as suggesting operators may have to swallow short-term losses to reach long-term objectives. "Uptake will not be driven by consumer demand so much as by operators including TV in bundles as a default service so that it appears free.” She estimates that only 30 percent of mobile TV viewers will actually ask for the service; the remaining 70 percent will receive it in a bundle. If marketed properly Gartner believes revenues could reach $25.8 billion by 2010, up from just $300 million today.

So, how to get there from here? Operators shouldn’t compete on price just yet, Milanesi said. They should endeavour to create a unique "mobile TV experience" to attract viewers (whatever that is) is ensure they offer users quality, variety and exclusivity (perhaps in the form of user-gen made-for-mobile content) to justify charging a premium for TV services - or to justify charging for it at all. No matter what strategy operators follow, they should not count on advertising to subsidize TV services much in the next five years.

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