China To Enforce Homegrown TV Standard

The Chinese government will force operators to use a homegrown mobile TV standard, STiMi (which stands for Satellite Terrestrial Interactive Multi-service Infrastructure), instead of any competing technology. “The national broadcast regulator, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television told mobile TV broadcasters this week they must use the STiMi standard developed by its own researchers, the official Xinhua News Agency said.” Many Chinese carriers already have mobile TV trials underway (the IHT article reports 1.5 million mobile TV subscribers in China, which I was a bit surprised by) and will need time to switch to the new system…not to mention any costs involved.
Introducing the standard could reduce costs because companie won’t have to pay royalties to overseas companies, but that’s an “all things being equal” scenario which doesn’t always apply (take a look at the mess that is the Chinese 3G standard).
There’s also a lot of talk that the move could boost China’s export of intellectual property, for example this from SignOnSanDiego: “China’s high-tech companies could benefit if the country’s systems were adopted as world standards, because they would have a head start in using it and could licence technology abroad.” The big IF in that statement is “if the country’s systems were adopted as world standards”…whatever benefits and advantages STiMi may have, it will be very difficult to compete with the relatively entrenched standards currently battling it out in Europe, North America and parts of Asia. I suppose Africa and some parts of Asia and Latin America are still up for grabs, but they’re unlikely to be big markets any time soon.
From a foreign-company-selling-technology-in-China point of view this is annoying, because it effectively removes China’s 420 million plus consumers from the general standards, so if they want to sell in China they’ll have to adjust.
Mind you, China has backed down on this sort of thing before (it’s WAPI wireless encryption standard) so there’s hope it will do so again.
Related stories:
China’s Banking On Its Own Mobile TV Standard
China Aims For Mobile TV Standard

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