If mobile TV is to become a success, the mobile TV industry needs to invent new business models
| – the models they are currently using will never result in a healthy industry. … A great deal has been said and written about the mobile TV market and through the years many “experts” have predicted that the value of this market will run up in the billions – money that the mobile operators, TV stations and production companies can make a very good living off. The problem is that so far we have not seen any cash flow in this area and mobile TV has not become the gold mine that many were predicting just a few years ago. In the infancy of mobile TV people talked about the need for parallel networks to unburden the mobile operators’ networks when customers wanted to watch television on their mobile devices. New standards like DVB-H, DMB and FLO were invented with the purpose of creating an alternative method of delivering mobile TV. But did they think about whether there would be an actual market for these standards, or whether these standards stood a chance of surviving in the longer term? We have closely examined and analysed the mobile TV market in Strand Consult’s new report The Moment of Truth, A Portrait of the Mobile TV Market . The report describes the many different mobile TV standards, examines how the value chain functions and how the cash flow is distributed between the market players. We have also examined the cost of building the various types of mobile TV networks and what it actually costs to produce and broadcast mobile TV on the different platforms. Which transmission type do you believe is cheapest; DVB-H or Mobile Broadband? Which mobile standard do you think is most interesting for a mobile operator? The conclusion is very simple – and for many of the world’s mobile TV market players there is unfortunately only bad news. We would love to publish lots of positive news about mobile TV and how much money there is to be made in this area, but we have not been in this business for 15 years by fabricating and selling good news, but instead by helping our customers navigate and achieve success in a complex mobile industry. We believe that alternative networks like DVB-H are not cost-efficient methods of delivering mobile TV. We believe that the bandwidth growth we are seeing on mobile operators’ 3G networks with HSDPA and LTE, together with the infrastructure price reductions, are contributing to it being significantly cheaper to deliver mobile TV via the mobile operators’ networks, rather than dedicated networks like DVB-H. During our research on how companies produce, package, market and sell mobile TV, it has become very clear that the industry ought to consider how they can develop new business models that will make it more interesting for customers to use and pay for mobile TV services. Mobile TV services must be able to compete with the free mobile TV that customers already have access to via e.g. Youtube and that is often being consumed using a flat rate data package subscription. In the new report The Moment of Truth, A Portrait of the Mobile TV Market we have examined and analysed the mobile TV market, described the various technologies and taken a close look at the current business models. The report also describes new business models that we believe may have a chance of success in the future. Strand Consult has examined what customers are currently paying for mobile TV and we have analysed how the current cash flow is being divided between the different market players in the mobile universe and the companies that are producing and selling mobile TV to the end users. The report describes how the industry is handling mobile TV today and puts forward a number of suggestions on how to change the future mobile TV universe into a much more healthy business for all involved market players. Mobile TV needs to be far more attractive for end-users, otherwise they will simply continue to watch Youtube for free on their mobile phones. Please do not hesitate to request more information about how you can achieve success on the mobile TV market. Use the link below to receive more information today about Strand Consult’s new report The Moment of Truth, A Portrait of the Mobile TV Market and purchase your copy of the report tomorrow. |
| More information: The Moment of Truth, A Portrait of the Mobile TV Market Related reports: How media companies can get success on the mobile broadband market How to get success with Value added services on the Mobile Broadband market Successful Strategies for the Mobile Broadband Market Show me the money – The future Business models for mobile Broadband Services OneAPI – Next Generation Value Added Services in the Mobile industry |
