There have been a couple of studies on mobile TV in the UK recently which have been interpreted as showing a great deal of support for mobile TV and at the same time — in different publications — ringing the technologies death knell. The one publication which seemed to avoid drawing conclusions — The Financial Times — seems to have changed its tune. The heading listed in Google news, Jury still out on mobile phone TV, has been changed to Studies show appetite for mobile phone TV.
The two trials under discussion are the Virgin/BT trial (which showed that customers listened to mobile radio 50% more than they watched mobile TV) and that has just been announced by O2. “The O2 trial, carried out in partnership with broadcast technology company Arqiva, broadcast 24-hour live access to 16 TV channels to 375 O2 users representing “a wide range of demographics” in the 18-44 age band. According to the company, 83 per cent of the triallists were “satisfied” with the service while 76 per cent indicated they would take up the service within 12 months.”
The BT trial has been reported in various ways:
–Red Herring: Brits Not Gaga for Mobile TV
–Tech Spot: Mobile TV not anticipated to be popular
–Guardian Unlimited: Mobile TV is not a turn-on, BT trial finds
–TeleGeography: Mobile TV trial disappoints
–VNUNet: BT claims successful mobile TV pilot
–Silicon.com: BT and Virgin get together for UK’s first mobile TV service
–Investment & Business News: TV for mobile phones: two thirds of us want it
–Telecom: BT Movio pilot shows demand for mobile digital TV, radio
–Digital Bulletin: BT to roll out commerical mobile TV service after positive pilot …
Without a doubt the O2 trial was more successful than the BT trial, based on the expressed interest level of the participants. FT suggests a likely explanation is the greater variety of content available in the O2 trial, which offered “a selection of channels from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five as well as programming from Sky, MTV and other content providers” compared with BT’s trial offering of “three channels a week from a selection of Sky News, Sky Sports News, E4, ITV2 and the Blaze music channel”.
I think the BT trial received negative press because although the trial was reasonably successful it wasn’t as successful as the telcos wanted…although a majority were interested in mobile TV it wasn’t as many as was hoped for, and although they were willing to pay up to 8 pounds for the service the telcos were hoping to sell it for a fair bit more.
One statistic which didn’t get much press was that “38% were prepared to switch networks to receive this service“, which is a huge deal if it translates into the real world.
There was also a lot made of the fact that mobile radio was shown to be more populat than mobile TV — which doesn’t indicate mobile TV isn’t popular, just that mobile radio is more popular. Which makes sense — mobile phones are at heart an audio device, and considering the entertainment generally takes place away from home radio is more useful since it leaves people available to do other things. In fact, in my experience people listen to more radio/music in the home than watch TV as they have it on while they do other things.
Statistics can lie, or at least be interpreted in pretty much any way by anybody, and trials and surveys have the added problem that what people say they would do or actually do in a trial is not necessarily what they would do with the real service — and it’s hard to tell which way the bias will lie.
From my varied readings I’ve come to this conclusion about mobile TV (based in the UK but I think it applies everywhere): Broadcast mobile TV will be successful, in that it will be profitable enough for telcos to roll out the service and keep it going. After all, it doesn’t even need a majority of mobile users to pay for the service, just a reasonably significant minority. There will be people who will choose a mobile service based on the TV offerings and other content offerings, under the assumption that all the voice plans are pretty much the same. However, mobile TV will not be the panacea many in the industry hope and claim it will be. Some commentary implies that mobile TV will be watched by everyone, everywhere, and the people will not only pay for the service but happily sit through ads which will bring in more money for the industry. It will be watched by some people, sometimes, and they will either pay to receive the service or accept ads for a free service — I doubt they’ll do both.
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