14 DAY TRIAL // A new report from the analyst firm Berg Insight found that almost 40 million people in Japan and South Korea watch mobile TV. This means 78 percent of the total mobile TV broadcasting, which makes a huge chunk of this market.
The result is little surprising. It is common knowledge that mobile TV has reached a much higher evolution rate in these countries, although the exact proportion of this tendency was only estimated. The Asia-Pacific markets are several years ahead of Europe and North America when it comes to this type of technology. In these other continents the development, in most cases, has been very slow and received little interest from mobile phone users.
When it comes to the regular providers for this type of content, "We believe that regular mobile networks will remain the dominant carrier for mobile video, at least for the next couple of years", considers Sabine Ehlers, associate analyst, Berg Insight. Ericsson sees this solution as best in the case of this type of services, as it reduces costs and also proves to be more convenient for users.
Berg Insight also foresees the possibility that, in the long term, the technologies used for providing mobile TV and other video services, as well as radio services, will be IP-based. This should follow the trend that mobile phones have been created as to replace PCs and all the features that they have to offer.
Europe and other continents have been reluctant to introducing mobile TV at a large scale. Moreover, the cost needed in order to build the infrastructure for such a technology is pretty large and few operators dare to deploy it as long as they don't have the certainty that it will pay off in the near future. Still, the handset evolution heads towards packing mobile TV along with other features, which might lead to more offers from carriers in the future.