Mobile TV: UK Users Change The Channel

A fairly damning article about the state of mobile TV in the UK from the Guardian … Taking its cue from last week’s demise of BT Movio, it goes through the numbers that show how mobile TV is still at a very early (read: tiny amounts of users) stage, with the pricing, quality and marketing of TV services failing to impress users:

— M:Metrics’ monthly statistics show the UK has about 45 million users of mobile phones. Of those, only 321,000, or 0.7 percent, have watched broadcast TV on a mobile at least once a month; and 386,000, or 0.9 percent, watched any commercial programmed TV or video on a mobile at least once a month. (The numbers for user-generated video are a bit more encouraging: 3.9 percent–about 1.7 million–have watched mobile UGC at least once a month.) “Simply put, TV on mobiles is a niche so slim that Victoria Beckham must cast envious glances at it.”

–Screen Digest is a little more upbeat: it says mobile TV distributed via 3G has been “relatively successful” in the UK, and that there were 450,000 mobile TV subscribers at the end of last year. (Although that still only works out to 1 percent of all UK mobile users.)

–A survey from Tellabs notes that more than half of those who had tried mobile TV in Europe decided not to use it again. Price was the main issue, with 45 percent deeming it expensive. “Quality and reliability issues” accounted for a further 24 percent turning off the TV.

–One positive note comes from mobile operator 3. It only has around 3.9 million users in the UK and doesn’t break out its mobile TV viewing figures, but it does claim that its users downloaded over 1 million reality TV clips in the last year.

–Another issue raised is the question of how the UK will comply with EU mandates on DVB-H rollouts. Currently the UHF band that DVB-H needs to work won’t be available until after analog switchoff in 2012. “Alone in Europe, the UK has not allocated or identified the radio spectrum that would be allocated to DVB-H – which means that it would have to go through the lengthy process of identifying, checking, clearing and auctioning it to operators.”

All in all, not a very bright picture.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post