[opendtv] Re: Mobile-TV IC market struggles to hold on
- From: "johnwillkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:58:57 -0700
I'd diagree, Bert.
This graf, fourth from the bottom, is the buried lede:
'As Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi sees it, "Uptake [of mobile
TV] will not be driven by consumer demand so much as by operators including
TV in basic bundles as a default service so that it appears free."'
What a value proposition!
That's basically my position for some time. Build out the network, acquire
the expensive programming and provide a service, but don't expect additional
revenue.
Low-tech mobile TV platform, yeah, that's the trick. The Italy "test" was
too high-tech. Low tech markets are just clamoring for low-tech mobile tv.
Low tech markets are the key to mobile tv. Repeat until replaced by the new
mantra.
I've got to remember that 4 years in the future prediction of 100 million
users, replaced a year later by "maybe 2 million this yar." I doubt the
latter figure.
Overall, I'd say a fairly realistic article about mobile tv, the writer is
'off' last year's kool-aid. (Remember the world cup stories?)
John Willkie
www.OurEPG.com
-----Mensaje original-----
De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En
nombre de Manfredi, Albert E
Enviado el: Monday, September 17, 2007 1:28 PM
Para: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Asunto: [opendtv] Mobile-TV IC market struggles to hold on
After initially appearing to dispel the excessive hype of the past few
years, the article seems to fall back to the idea that mobile TV, as a
separate subscrtiption service, might still be interesting to consumers.
I've always had my doubts, but that's not to say that portable and even
mobile reception of plain old DTT should be pursued.
Bert
-------------------------------------------
Mobile-TV IC market struggles to hold on
Junko Yoshida
(09/17/2007 9:00 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201806942
Amsterdam, Netherlands - Suppliers of mobile-TV technology, waiting for
the fledgling market to take wing, have already entered a race for
survival.
The number of credible mobile-TV chip vendors is down to three: DiBcom,
Siano Mobile Silicon and Newport Media. Bigger semiconductor companies,
such as Texas Instruments and NXP Semiconductors, are putting their
mobile-TV projects on the back burner.
To stay in this embryonic market, "you must believe in mobile TV," said
Mohy Abdelgany, president and CEO of Newport Media. It requires "a leap
of faith" and money, he said. While a few chip vendors have fallen off
the pace, Abdelgany said, "With the $85 million we've got, we can
outspend larger companies."
But his company may be an anomaly.
Various mobile-TV trials and commercial rollouts have reminded the
industry of the critical importance of spectrum availability and
up-front network build-out planning. But they have offered scant clues
about effective business models or specific mobile-TV standards.
Italy's much-celebrated mobile-TV broadcast services--rolled out in time
for the soccer World Cup last year--are now considered a blip that came
and went with little impact, according to many industry insiders who
attended the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) here Sept.
7-11. Although Italian consumers initially embraced DVB-H-based
mobile-TV handsets, the devices' popularity has reportedly reached a
plateau. To foster a new round of market growth, operators are launching
an effort to bundle free- and pay-TV channels.
Qualcomm's aggressive investment in MediaFLO-based networks has helped
the two largest U.S. operators--Verizon Wireless and AT&T--to solidify
their mobile-TV strategies. But this has effectively smothered the
competing DVB-H-based system and stifled interest in mobile TV in the
United States.
Modeo, which closed shop earlier this year, was the first casualty. Many
suspect that Hiwire is next. Hiwire, a subsidiary of Aloha Partners and
the largest owner of 700-MHz spectrum in the United States, is promoting
DVB-H. But most in the mobile-TV industry now see the company as "a
spectrum speculator" rather than a serious operator.
Azzedine Boubguira, vice president of marketing and business development
at DiBcom, said, "It's not MediaFLO that won. It's DVB-H that failed" in
the U.S.
Verizon started marketing MediaFLO-based mobile-TV handsets earlier this
year, and the service is available in 37 markets. But the carrier has
never provided hard data about how many people are signing up.
Newport Media's Abdelgany is hopeful, though. "We may see new market
dynamics once AT&T starts mobile-TV services," he said. His company
plans to sample a single-die tuner/demodulator SoC compliant with the
MediaFLO spec early next year. It is pinning its hopes on leading
handset vendors such as Nokia, which does not use Qualcomm chip sets,
starting to supply MediaFLO-compliant cell phones to AT&T.
Meanwhile, U.K. British Telecom this summer shut down its mobile
broadcast branch, BT Movio. The Digital Audio Broadcasting-IP
(DAB-IP)-based delivery platform developed by BT Movio was the only
mobile broadcast TV service in the U.K. While the operator declared that
the service would carry on until the beginning of next year, BT canceled
the contract with GCap Media, which provided access to the DAB spectrum.
Some blamed its failure on the HTC-manufactured "Lobster phone"--the
only phone made available for the service--for being unattractive and
offering poor TV quality. However, others believe BT Movio got caught
between a lack of spectrum availability in the U.K. (which pushed it to
adopt DAB instead of DVB-H) and the European Commission's meddling. The
EC had leaned hard on member states to adopt the DVB-H standard. Screen
Digest in the U.K. noted that BT Movio was "stuck with a platform
[DAB-IP] which cannot draw enough attention from mobile operators,
handset manufacturers and, inevitably, mobile subscribers."
Resetting expectations
Only a year ago, in June 2006, In-Stat predicted, "By the end of 2010,
mobile-TV broadcast subscribers worldwide will reach 102 million, a
giant leap from 3.4 million in 2006." The Gartner Group went even
further. Earlier this year, the market research firm predicted mobile TV
"will become a mainstream service in most developed markets by 2010 with
close to half a billion subscribers worldwide."
Gartner included TV service over cellular, which it forecast would grow
from 38 million users in 2007 to 356 million in 2010. Meanwhile, the
firm said that TV broadcasting would reach 133 million mobile
subscribers by 2010, due in the main to the growing availability of
broadcast-enabled phones. Japan, said Gartner, would lead the way,
followed by Western Europe.
Today, few people are talking about 100 million subscribers for 2010.
Siano put the total of all mobile-TV broadcast subscribers in 2006 at
only a few million. At best, Siano said, it might hit 20 million in
2007. Rick Doherty, president of Envisioneering Group, a Seaford,
N.Y.-based technology assessment and research outfit, said, "Everyone is
resetting their mo- bile-TV expectations."
All the noise surrounding mobile-TV standards has only tended to make
the market more chaotic. Philip Laven, former director of the technical
department of the European Broadcasting Union, said in his lecture at
IBC, "Advocates of the systems would like to persuade you that their
system is the best. Don't believe people who are promoting it. None of
them give a clear recommendation in favor of single system, because
comparisons are difficult and quite complicated even for technical
people."
For example, spectral efficiency alone couldn't be a deciding factor,
because operators tend to select lower data rates for better coverage.
As for coverage reliability, while digital terrestrial TV networks
deliver 18 to 24 Mbits/s to rooftop antennas, mobile-TV networks face
more difficulties. "A built-in antenna for handheld devices is typically
small and inefficient," Laven said. "[And] users want their handheld
devices to work not only outdoors at ground level, but also indoors."
In the final analysis, the issue is network cost. Different network
topology is needed to deliver reliable mobile-TV services. This means
building denser networks of lower-power transmitters.
Many chip vendors are keenly aware of the network build-out obstacles.
But the key issue, said Ronen Jashek, director of technical marketing
and cofounder of Siano, is spectrum. Once spectrum was made available
and allocated, the mobile-TV market quickly picked up, "as Korea, Italy
and Japan have shown," Jashek said.
Free-to-air myth
Market watchers expect that about 7 million units of portable devices,
capable of receiving Japan's free-to-air ISDB-T digital broadcast TV,
will be sold this year in Japan alone. The number is expected to
increase to 20 million next year, they said, mainly because of NTT
Docomo's plan to equip nearly 50 percent of its hand- sets with ISDB-T
1-seg mobile TV reception capabilities.
As one who views free-to-air as a trigger for mobile TV, Siano's Jashek
noted that some 30 countries are already offering free-to-air
broadcasting--both digital radio and TV. Korea also has 5 million
subscribers to its T-DMB service, he said.
But how many consumers are ready to buy subscription-based pay-mobile-TV
packages on their handsets?
As Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi sees it, "Uptake [of
mobile TV] will not be driven by consumer demand so much as by operators
including TV in basic bundles as a default service so that it appears
free."
DiBcom's Boubguira prescribed three steps for mobile TV growth:
available spectrum, an effective business model and availability of
low-cost phones.
Mobile TV needs to become available not only in 3G phones but also in
Edge phones, he said.
In low-tech markets, said Boubguira, "you need a low-cost mobile-TV
platform." DiBcom is working with its partners on such a platform.
All material on this site Copyright 2007 CMP Media LLC. All rights
reserved.
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