Mobile TV

Friday, January 19, 2007

Mobile TV revenues on the rise

Annual revenues from mobile TV and mobile video on demand (VoD) are set to increase 800pc between 2006 and 2010, new research has claimed.

The research by Understanding & Solutions reckons on a bright future for mobile TV. “By 2010 we predict mobile TV and mobile VoD will achieve combined revenues of around US$18bn worldwide,” said Alison Casey, business director of content and services at Understanding & Solutions, “and that’s excluding revenues from advertising, sponsorship and added interactive services.”

Despite the considerable interest in mobile TV last year around the World Cup, there was only one major mobile TV launch using broadcast technology, that of 3 Italia’s WalkTV, followed by smaller-scale actions.

However, in 2007 there are more mobile TV services scheduled to launch across a variety of standards.

DVB-H (digital video broadcasting over handheld) is expected to be the dominant platform in Europe due to its robust error correction, power efficiencies and ability to hold up to 80 channels.

Based on subscribers, the world’s most successful mobile TV implementation to date is TU Media/SK Telekom in South Korea, which has an estimated base exceeding three million at the end of 2006. This is followed by 3 Italia, which had half a million subscribers at the end of last year.

“Whether we’re talking dedicated mobile TV services such as 3 Italia, cellular-based mobile TV services like Vodafone and Sky, mobile VoD such as Fox ‘Mobisodes’, or even made-for-mobile content like ‘Love Love Ting’ on Korean T-DMB, the amount of TV content accessible on your mobile phone is skyrocketing,” said David Sidebottom, consultant with Understanding & Solutions.

“With all this activity, we already have clear indications of the content winners and content losers.

“Whereas digital TV is all about choice,” continued Sidebottom, “mobile TV is about favourites and performs well when it’s addressing local and national tastes. ‘Dip in, dip out’ and short-form are important mobile content attributes, and much mobile TV usage will be competing with mobile games, web content and podcasting.”

Reality TV shows such as Big Brother are a good example of ‘dip in, dip out’ viewing, with live webcam streams and updates available on mobile.

In addition, highlights and audience interaction through voting provides further revenue streams. Similar mobile content initiatives are now common for talent contests such as The X Factor. Consumers may sign up to a mobile TV service simply because their favourite soap is available or it has the top football rights.

However, according to Understanding & Solutions, there are lessons to be learned from made-for-mobile episodes.

Production costs are generally high; therefore a wide distribution platform is crucial in order to receive a return on investment.

There is also evidence that consumers are still not used to using their handsets in this way.

The BBC launched 13 separate one-minute long Doctor Who ‘Tardisodes’ running alongside the TV series. Despite advertising at the end of each TV episode and the content being free, only 40,000 ‘Tardisodes’ were downloaded, compared to 2.7 million online PC views.

“Moving forward, interactivity and community will be key factors in mobile TV uptake,” said Casey. “Talent contests, quizzes, music television, events and other genres will become increasingly popular – and these formats are already appearing on Korean mobile TV services.

“The market activity to date reaffirms our view that mobile TV will be a significant business in coming years – customer take-up in the major launch markets of South Korea and Italy have been remarkable, with consumers also showing willingness to pay incrementally for quality TV on mobile services.”

Globally, Understanding & Solutions predicts mobile TV revenues to exceed mobile VoD by a ratio of almost four to one by 2010, pulling in around US$14.3bn and US$3.7bn respectively.

(c) SiliconRepublic.Com

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

@Napte Mobile++: The Future Of Video Content According To Cyriac Roeding, CBS

(c) MocoNews

Cyriac Roeding, VP of wireless for CBS Corporation, gave a very good keynote about what he thinks will happen to the content industry over the next ten years, and therefore probably an indication of what CBS will attempt to do. He doesn’t see the big brand productions as being in danger from the new forms of media, but rather strengthened by them. He agreed that the long tail will be very important, but argued that big content and big communities are here to stay because “people like to have friends”, and big sports events and big brand content are what people like to talk about when they get together—especially with someone new. So a great deal of the talk in online communities will be about the big broadcast shows that have traditionally dominated the media. He said the biggest winners will blend professional content with user generated content so seamlessly that you won’t be able to tell which is which. He also said that all TVs will be bidirectional because they’ll be connected to the internet, and mobile phones will become the way to respond to any medium. He also insisted that people will only respond to significant choices that affect the shows, rather than fake choices that don’t really matter.

Another thing he sees as supporting the return of traditional platforms is something he referred to as “VoD Zapping”, which effectively combines the ability to view shows when you want (rather than at a fixed time) combined with recommendations from your friends direct on your TV, as well as recommendations based on your previous viewing history. So you turn on your TV and a notice comes up saying “Wendy recommends The Sopranos” and you can press a button to start the show immediately. “Users will create and install their own content communities, and cellphones will be personal remote controls,” he said. The incredible choice that will be available to consumers raises the bar for content creators, because with the increased number of platforms that need to be catered for and the larger amount of content available it’s more difficult to stick out of the mass, and anything that doesn’t break will go into the long-tail. On the plus side it will be far easier for something in the long-tail of high quality to become a blockbuster.

Roeding referred to providing content for the increasing number of media as platforming. Rather than just extending a brand to different platforms, this is thinking about the different platforms from the start of the content creation process, and developing content specifically for those platforms from the beginning. People use content with different technologies throughout the day, from radio to mobile to TV to computers, and the content has to be developed for each device but give the same overall message. The different platforms should be regarded as catering for different situations the consumer is in rather than different technologies. “The cellphone is not a small TV screen, this is a medium in its own right and it has it’s own rules,” he said. Later he described mobile entertainment as the intersection of entertainment, personalization and peer-to-peer communication, but complained that most mobile content is only entertainment—not personalized or peer-to-peer.

In regards to advertising he said: “360 degree advertising used to mean being present on all platforms… now it’s about platforming advertising messages.” The advertising needs to follow the content, and has to be developed in a very different fashion for the different platforms but still give the same message.

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@Napte Mobile++: Mobile TV/Video Usages Soaring—Telephia

(c) MocoNews

I missed the 5 minute Telephia presentation yesterday, but Levi Shapiro (director of audience metrics) was nice enough to meet with me and go over it agan. The big figure he mentioned was a prediction for the uptake of mobile video/TV in the US for the fourth quarter of 2006—more than 6 million subscribers and $250 million in revenue. That’s a lot more than many people were expecting...it’s taken from scraping bills rather than a survey methodology.
He did have figures for Q3 (5.1 million subscribers, $140.7 million in revenue) and Q2 (3.69 million subscribers and $85.8 million in revenue), and the figure that the market for mobile video and TV more doubled from Q1 to Q3 last year. These are pretty good figures—in the third quarter there was a 2.3 percent penetration of mobile video/TV and the average revenue per mobile video/TV subscriber was $10.21. Which means about a third of the revenue is from subscribers and two thirds is from download purchases.
Mobile video/TV has passed mobile games in terms of revenue (but not in terms of penetration or subscribers), games has been sitting around 7 percent penetration for a few quarters and audio at around 11 percent. If the mobile TV/video penetration can approach that of mobile audio it will be a viable business.
Another interesting statistic—70 percent of mobile video/TV usage is from males, whereas other content such as games, ringtones and wallpapers are used mostly by females. Also, 82 percent of users watch for more than five minutes at a time. The average viewing time isn’t much use, being skewed by the 11 percent of users watching for more than two hours or more at at time—Shapiro opined that these people aren’t really watching, they have an unlimited plan and have the service running while they do other things on the phone, or just leave it running on a table.
Other figures were are familiar (African Americans and Hispanics use it more than Caucasians, it’s often used in the home)...there’s also some figures on reach—the weather Channel reaches 88 percent of the handsets of people who use mobile TV and video, Fox Sports 88 percent and ESPN 68 percent. This isn’t how many people use the service, mind. Interestingly only six channels are actually accessible on the handsets of more than 50 percent of mobile TV/video users. The download figures are different, the most popular times are comedy, music and entertainment...although you would expect people to stream immediate things like weather and news and download things like music and entertainment.

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