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The Rise of the ATSC M/H machines | | | | | | | The Battle for American Mobile TV
EMAIL: peter@rethinkresearch.biz for a free executive summary | | | | | | Published: Monday 18 January, 2010
| | | | | The US has been a black hole for mobile TV technologies, with failed attempts to bring DVB-H, DVB-SH and Satellite Radio versions of mobile video to consumers there. US chipmaker Qualcomm has renewed its MediaFLO offensive having spent almost $1 billion in total trying to find the Mobile TV sweet spot. But so far it has failed. So is there any reason why new devices based on a mobile variant of the ATSC digital terrestrial transmission standard should fare any better?
The conditions in the US now are set to be almost identical to those in Japan five years ago when it launched its own Mobile TV initiative. There is widespread mobile VoD usage; Digital TV has just become available; mobile penetration is virtually identical; smartphones are on the rise, and cellular networks have real broadband..And the new US service will be free and includes vital local services.
This is why the US will rush to a position where there are 2 ATSC M/H devices to every 3 people which live there, in a short five year period. It won’t happen overnight and there are key milestones which will trigger the development, all detailed in the latest Rethink Technology Research Report.
There are reports focused on ATSC M/H which suggest that it will have a slow take off, based upon consumer expectation and awareness of mobile TV. But by taking lessons from Japan and Korea, we can see the phenomenal rate of take up that is really likely to happen.
Mobile TV is really about putting all the right ingredients into play. Creating an eco-system and providing a way the community—broadcasters, cellcos, technology suppliers and content owners—can all work together, and all make a profit. If they can’t actually make a profit out of it, they should at least be able to use it to stem losses.
Once all those ingredient’s are in place, then Mobile TV accelerates. It will become a feature-creep essential on most mobile devices, and consumers will begin to expect to have TV at their disposal whenever they have a portable device with them—which can mean more than one viewing device per person.
This report simply takes the Japanese experience and applies the lessons learned there to the uptake rate for mobile TV in the US—and the result is staggering. Rethink Technology Research sees a future where mobile TV is led by handsets, but not restricted to them, and where every car in the US slowly accumulates at last one screen upon which to watch some form of video.
EMAIL: peter@rethinkresearch.biz for a free executive summary | |
Wireless Watch covers all forms of Wireless and Wi-Fi, including WiMax, Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMAN), OFDM, LTE, MIMO, Telecommunications, Telephones, CDMA, WCDMA, UMTS, cellular technology, base stations, smart antenna and IEEE standards.
Faultline covers film, Television, codecs such as H.264 and Windows Media Player 9, Mergers and acquisitions, Broadband, DRM (Digital Rights Management), Digital TV, HDTV, MP3, MPEG, Cable TV, Satellite, ADSL, Cable Modems, mobile TV, DVB-H, DVB-SH, T-DMB, CMMB STiMi, ATSC, ATSC M/H, DVB-T, DVB-T2, ISDB-T, satellite TV.
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