Reiter's Mobile TV Report

South Africa's Vodacom operator has 22 mobile TV channels, but Web site outdated

South Africa's cellular operator Vodacom offers 22 mobile television channels, according to a recent article in Variety, but you'd be confused by looking at its Vodafone live! Web site.

The mobile TV section (see above) says, "On the 1st of March, 2006 Mobile TV goes commercial.  With over 14 channels, exclusive content and customer friendly pricing this is sure to be one of the hottest Vodafone live! services."

When you read this you can see the problems.  Firstly, "goes commercial" implies the service hasn't started.  How about changing it to "went commercial," or "was launched" or, simply, "started"?  (Yes, I can understand why they're using the present tense, but it doesn't work as well.)

Picky, picky?

Secondly, "over 14 channels" is, I guess, technically accurate because there are more than that, but wouldn't the correct number be better?  Thirdly, perhaps "is sure to be [italics mine] one of the hottest Vodafone live! services" should be changed to "is one of the hottest...."?

After all, after nine months, Vodacom should know whether it's one of the hottest services -- or not imply that it is.

Am I being too picky?

Hit soap opera for mobile TV

I looked at the site because I was reading Variety's article about Vodacom offering  Afrikaans-language "Sewende Laan" ("Seventh Avenue" in English), the second most popular soap opera produced locally, for mobile TV subscribers.  Vodacom also offers videos that are about two minutes long with information about the show, including gossip, what's coming up next and the thoughts of the characters.

These mobisodes are released after the show ends, the article notes.

Since so many analysts say subscribers won't watch shows for more than a few minutes, it would be interesting to how know successful the soap opera is on mobile TV.

South Korea's TU Media tops 1 million S-DMB users, but hoped for 1.2 million

TU Media Corp. in South Korea has reached one million subscribers for its fee based satellite mobile TV service, but had hoped to reach 1.2 million by the end of 2006, according to a report in Yonhap News.

The S-DMB service was launched in May 2005 and had 370,000 subscribers by the end of the year.  The mobile TV offering now costs 9,900 won ($10.80) per month, a decrease of 2,000 won ($2.18).

South Korea also has terrestrial-based DMB that was launched in December 2005.  Three major companies and three small firms offer T-DMB, the article says.

"Along with S-DMB service, the T-DMB service is seen as a new growth engine for local telecom companies, including mobile handset manufacturers," Yonhap News reports.

Spain's pay TV company to provide ten channels for Vodafone Spain

Spain's leading pay television operator, Sogecable, will provide ten channels to Vodafone in Spain for mobile television, according to Reuters.

The brief article says, "After an introductory offer period, phone users will be charged six euros ($7.88) a month for channels providing news, documentaries and drama."

Spanish cellular operator Telefonica is Vodafone's main competitor and Sogecable's major stockholder, Reuters reports.  "But Spanish rules restrict Sogecable's cooperation with Telefonica," the article says.

EE Times reports China's own satellite mobile TV standard similar to DVB-SH

China's own protocol for satellite-based mobile television, China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB), is very similar to the European satellite mobile TV standard DVB-SH, according to an article in EE Times.

The article notes that CMMB "may help chip and infrastructure providers leverage their R&D investments, but it could also raise some sticky IP issues."  In addition, the article says, "Some officials have hinted that the standard would be mandatory, effectively blocking the potential nationwide deployment of Europe's DVB-Handheld, Qualcomm's MediaFLO and South Korea's Terrestrial-DMB."

That wouldn't be surprising, given China's propensity for developing its own telecommunications standards in order to give its industries a major advantage.  Of course, many companies create their own "standards" and try to get the world to adopt them.

Difficult deployment

Bosco Fernandes, chairman of the Mobile TV Group for the UMTS Forum, says in the article that he was recently in Beijing and noted how similar CMMB was to DVB-SH.  However, he doesn't think the Chinese standard will be easy to deploy.

Fernandes thinks cellular operators will have to use unicast or multicast services, not CMMB, in order to offer mobile TV in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics on Beijing. 

He says that after the Olympics, the Chinese standard could be added to the mobile TV infrastructure to create a hybrid network.

U.K.'s Orange gets thousands of mobile TV subscribers for cricket championship

The U.K. cellular operator Orange says it has been getting thousands of subscribers for its mobile television service because it has been broadcasting The Ashes, a cricket championship between Australia and the U.K. (see below), according to an article in Mobile Entertainment.

Sky Sports has been providing the feed and Orange says it has been the most watched channel on its mobile TV service.  Because of the time difference between Australia and the U.K., the peak times for watching mobile TV in Britain have been between 12:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. and during the morning commute, the article says.

Deborah Tonroe, the head of Orange’s TV and video service, says, "With the Ashes series running throughout the night, the definite trend amongst our users has been to follow the morning session before they go to bed, the closing stages of play and highlights on the train or the bus as they go to work.

"The only way they’ll be able to do that is on their mobile phones."

Additional mobile TV cricket shows

Orange is offering much more than just the matches themselves, as the Web site describes. 

For example, the cellular operator is providing a variety of match highlights, text commentaries, interviews, videos from previous cricket matches, wallpapers, ringtones and even "cartoon video re-enactments of crickets greatest sledges" (i.e., insulting opponents).

U.K. cellular operators Vodafone, that sponsors the English team, and 3 also are sponsoring Sky Sports Ashes as part of their mobile TV services, the article says.

Informa says mobile TV worldwide to generate $1.8 billion by 2011

Mobile television revenues will increase to more than $1.8 billion in 2011, according to Daniel Winterbottom, a senior analyst at Informa and co-author of Informa's "Mobile Entertainment" report.

Winterbottom says in the Informa press release, "Large sporting events, like the Ashes cricket tour, are seeing more and more people take out subscription packages with their operators that allow them to watch TV services on the move, and this is reflected by the phenomenal growth this segment will see."

(See the previous weblog article about Orange getting thousands of mobile TV subscribers because of the Ashes cricket matches.)

The total worldwide market for mobile entertainment is $18.8 billion in 2006, the report says.  Music and images (wallpapers, avatars and others) represent 64 percent of 2006 revenues.

Wireless music, games, videos expand

Although music will continue to be strong, images will decline to the fourth place, below wireless games and video (see below).  I wonder whether "images" include camera phone photos.

The press release notes, "Ringtones and wallpapers, mainstays of the mobile entertainment, are becoming less important as consumers upgrade to more advanced handsets which support a wide array of entertainment features, from 3D games to broadcast TV to high quality music playback.

"Mobile games and mobile video, which together represent only one-quarter of mobile entertainment revenues in 2006, will account for close to half of the mobile entertainment market's growth over five years' time."

BT Movio says U.K.'s Channel 4 offers full programs because of demand

U.K.'s Channel 4 is offering its full line-up of television shows to BT Movio for broadcast over mobile television because consumers don't want just snippets of shows, according to the BT Moviso press release.

BT wholesales mobile TV to cellular operators.  It provides shows for Virgin Mobile's service in the U.K.

"Consumers gave us a clear message during the BT Movio pilot that they want the full, live TV channels they are familiar with at home on their mobile, rather than watered down highlights," says Emma Lloyd, managing director of BT Movio, in the release.

Long or short?

Previously, Channel 4 offered the "Short Cuts" channel especially for mobile TV, that included segments of regular TV programs.

I find this somewhat amusing -- not because of what Movio and Virgin are offering -- but because of how mobile TV "experts" say conflicting things.  One group of experts says people don't want or won't pay enough for real time broadcasting of regular TV, such as the group marketing director of ROK Entertainment in the article directly below.

Gina Lombardi, president of MediaFLO USA, believes there's no contest:  People will want longer programs, as I previously wrote.

You're both right

I'm in the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too.  I believe the mobile TV business will be based on both real time streaming of existing TV programs as well as on-demand videos of full-length programs and segments of full-length programs.

I guess we'll see who's right in, say, two years.  Wanna take any bets?

ROK's group marketing director likes near real time sports program business model

From the always useful MoCoNews.net, I found some good information about mobile television by Bruce Renny, the group marketing director of ROK Entertainment, who spoke at the Westminster eForum Seminar Series on Mobile Sports Rights in London.

A transcript of Renny's speech has been posted on the Sport and Technology Web site and includes information about the format of sports information people would like to watch and problems with obtaining rights to use programs over cellular.

ROK offers a variety of mobile TV programs, both paid and free.  I tried the free version and didn't like it.

Best payment model

Renny says most people watch mobile TV only a few minutes at a time and the best service for sports is near real time video on demand.  He says people will pay only a "token amount" for real time streaming, but they will pay more for near real time video clips.

The payment is the key.  It doesn't matter, he says, whether people will watch mobile TV for long period but, rather, how much they are willing to pay for the privilege.

"We think people will be prepared to pay a premium for content on their mobiles that they want to watch, when they want to watch it, not when it’s broadcast," he says.

Broadcasting rights

Renny suggests a good mobile TV business model for on-demand sports is to bundle it with other offerings, such as an entertainment channel and a news channel and sell the package for five pounds ($5.80) to ten pounds ($19.60) per month.

In answer to a question from the audience, he discusses the difficulty getting the rights to broadcast programs.  "I could get Fox News everywhere in the world except America.

"And I can get BBC World everywhere in the world except the UK.  There is no such thing as a global play for branded news and certainly for premium sports."

Mobile content seller Handango says mobile TV to grow in 2007

The mobile content sales company Handango has released seven predictions for 2007, including noting that mobile television will be hot, according to the press release.

With the subhead of "mobile TV will hit the small screen in a big way," here's what Handango says:

"Smartphone screen quality and download speeds are constantly improving, making mobile devices a convenient choice for viewing more than just photos or quick video clips.  With popular television shows now available for download, people   are increasingly watching programs on-the-go.

"Although Yankee Group reports in its 2006 U.S. Mobile User Survey that less than 5% of respondents are currently using their mobile phones for watching TV and video, Handango predicts that this is a huge area of growth for the smartphone market in 2007.

"Live and streaming applications MobiTV, HandiTV and PocketStreamer   were all launched in 2006 and quickly broke into the top 40 best-selling titles for the Pocket PC platform.  Fourth quarter revenue for these three applications alone is projected to increase 63% over the previous quarter."

I certainly agree that mobile TV will continue to improve and grow.  But I've also seen reports that question the success of it.

mywaves offers free mobile TV, video downloads

Mywaves has launched its commercial operation that offers 10,000 video on demand channels for free for cellular phones (see below), according to the company's press release.

Mywaves offers videos from major media companies as well as user-created content.  If you scan the channels you'll see the overwhelming majority of the videos are not from major media companies.

The News category does offer a fair number of videos from traditional broadcasting companies such as ABC and NBC.  Overall, though, you'll get a much more professional selection from the current crop of mobile TV services offered by cellular operators.

Like iTunes

The company says on its Web site that, "We designed this puppy very similarly to the way Apple created itunes."  Perhaps, but iTunes (not "itunes") started with hundreds of thousands (or was it more than 1 million?) of professionally produced music tracks, followed by professionally produced television shows, audiobooks, movies, etc.

Yes, iTunes also has become a great source for podcasts that are not only from professional news organizations but also very professionally produced podcasts from non-traditional news organizations and individuals.

Mywaves can transmit SMS to users to alert them to new videos and users may configure their own selection of favorites that may be shared with others.

This is just the beginning for mywaves so it's unfair to judge the service by its initial offerings.

Sign-up process

I signed up.  The process was simple and quick via Sprint and using the LG Fusic (1xEV-DO, Rev. 0) handset I'm using for six months as part of Sprint's "Ambassador" program, although mywaves enables you to also use Cingular, T-Mobile and Verizon.

To sign up I confirmed I was using a U.S. operator, selected Sprint, entered my cellular phone number and e-mail address and agreed to the "terms of use" and confirmed I was at least 13 years old.

In less than 30 seconds I got an SMS with a password that I entered on the mywaves Web site and was sent a URL for downloading the application.  I downloaded it in less than a minute, to "My Content" and I could use it without any problem.

Videos I watched

I haven't gone through many of the selections, but I watched a few in the News section, including an investigative report about mining disasters from ABC and "Face the Nation" from CBS. 

I didn't watch the entire broadcasts, but they worked okay.  The video quality seemed to be sometimes worse than when watching Sprint's own video offerings, but the mywaves videos were watchable.

One thing I found interesting.  When watching Sprint TV's live streaming offerings, such as ABC News Now and Fox News, after a few minutes you need to press a key (any key) to continue watching or the program ends.

With mywaves, I watched "Face the Nation" for more than 20 minutes and there wasn't any requirement to press a key to continue.  I like that a lot.  I understand cellular operators don't want to broadcast a program if you're not watching, but I prefer the ability to start the show and listen to the end.

Problems, advertisers

Several videos couldn't be downloaded because service problems, according to an error message.

I saw three advertisers:  T-Mobile, Earthlink and the RIM BlackBerry Pearl.  I don't know whether the advertisers are exclusive to mywaves or part of the original program.

The videos include four menu items:  Watch, Subscribe (to the channel), Invite (send an SMS to your own e-mail to invite others to view the video) and Details (typically generic information about the video).

Worth exploring

You may select videos according to the most popular, latest, etc.

For some videos you might see the length is much longer than what you might assume.  You assume correctly.  Videos seem chained together so after the video you select, another one will play automatically.

Mywaves is an interesting service and is worth exploring.