In-Stat: Mobile TV Broadcast Subscribers to Leap to 100 Million by 2010

In-Stat predicts that "by the end of 2010, mobile TV broadcast subscribers worldwide will reach 102 million, a giant leap from 3.4 million in 2006. Recognizing that using cellular networks to deliver content that millions want to watch simultaneously requires much greater bandwidth than is currently available, carriers are turning to mobile TV broadcast networks, which have a much lower cost per bit for video delivery."

Michelle Abraham at In-Stat said, “The greatest challenge for mobile TV broadcast operators is to acquire the spectrum necessary to offer services,. Spectrum availability may determine which of four standards is chosen, and also impacts the business case for the deployment of a network.”

Highlights of recent research include:

• There are positives and negatives to each standard, but each has a vendor eco-system behind it to enable deployment today.
• 2005 was the year of the first deployments, with ongoing trials in many parts of the world.
• Mobile carriers, mobile TV network operators, and content providers will soon be testing business models to determine what mobile phone subscribers are willing to pay to watch and what advertisers are willing to pay to reach them.