IMS Research reports, not surprisingly, that mobile television standards will be based in large part upon local/regional considerations. In other words, superior technology isn’t the only consideration.
The firm says in its announcement that Qualcomm’s MediaFLO will see 60 percent of the worldwide usage in the Americas by 2011. (Verizon Wireless already offers MediaFLO and AT&T/Cingular will offer MediaFLO later this year.)
Europe will be dominated by DVB-H/DVB-SH with 61 percent of the worldwide market for that technology. That’s a “duh” because the European Commission helped fund and endorsed it, as I previously noted.
Other region-specific mobile TV protocols include T-DMB and ISDB-T in South Korea and Japan between 2007 and 2011, as IMS notes. Again, if you follow the mobile TV marketplace you know how a country like South Korea is actively promoting DMB, as a BusinessWeek article details.
Multiple reasons for selection
Anna Hunt, the research director at IMS Research, says in the release, “Operator and government decisions about which mobile TV standard to deploy in each country or region depend on a number of variables including spectrum availability, existing cellular and DTT infrastructure, market needs, and national political and economic interests.
“This has resulted in a situation where in certain regions, different standards gained a distinct advantage in building the consensus required to deploy a broadcast network, thereby gaining the first-mover advantage so key in a standards war.”
While one might be tempted to scoff at cellular operators and countries not picking “the best” technology, the fact is “best” is a slippery slope.
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