The Guardian, MoCoNews.net discuss mobile TV statistics

Following up on its article about the demise of Virgin Mobile’s mobile TV service, The Guardian discusses mobile TV statistics, and MoCoNews.com discusses that article and adds some statistics as well.

Headlined “Television is a turnoff for mobile users:  TV on mobile phones has got the thumbs down from UK users, despite operators spending millions trying to get them to tune in,” The Guardian notes statistics from the market research firms of M:Metrics and Screen Digest.  The Guardian reports:

“Certainly the latest monthly statistics on mobile phone TV viewing in the UK, compiled by M:Metrics, are bleak reading for operators who have invested millions in it.  The UK has about 45 million users of mobile phones.  Of those, 3.9% — about 1.7 million — have watched user-generated video on their mobile, sent by family or friends at least once a month.

“On its own, that's not a bad number:  you can build a big business on 4% of a population.  But the numbers plummet on mobile TV:  just 321,000, or 0.7%, watched broadcast TV on a mobile at least once a month; and 386,000, or 0.9%, watched any commercial programmed TV or video on a mobile at least once a month.

“The overlap between the latter two groups is substantial, with half the total (of 551,000) belonging to both groups. By contrast, less than one-fifth of those who watch user-generated video also watch any broadcast or on-demand TV on mobiles.”

A little bit of optimism

A more optimistic view is opined in the newspaper by Screen Digest that says “unicast” mobile TV, i.e., via 3G, isn’t doing too badly in the U.K.  The market research firm says the top three U.K. operators have launched more than 25 channels each on average and at the end of 2006 there were almost 450,000 subscribers.

Another positive statistic on MoCoNews notes that the U.K. cellular operator 3, with 3.9 million subscribers, saw one million downloads of reality TV video clips.  (Personal, snobbish notes:  I don’t find it particularly positive that people downloaded reality TV videos; I can almost feel my I.Q. plummeting at the mere thought of watching reality TV.)

On a less positive note, MoCoNews says a survey by Tellabs reports that more than half of the people who tried mobile TV in Europe decided not to use it again.  Forty five percent said it was too expensive and 24 percent complained about “quality and reliability issues.”

Actually, the consumer complaints in the survey could all be rectified in time.  I see no reason why pricing, quality and reliability can’t be made up to snuff.