The recently concluded World Cup proved to be a catalyst for the mobile TV efforts of 3 Italia, the Italian mobile media company that is part of Hutchison Whampoa’s global collection of 3G carriers. According to 3 Italia’s CEO, the company signed up over 111,000 subscribers in six weeks after the June 5th launch, which was timed to coincide with the start of the tournament.
In contrast, it took South Korea’s TU Media nearly one year to sign up 100,000 subscribers to its Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB) television system for mobile phones.
3 Italia’s experience is worth watching given that Italy is the first European country to launch nationwide mobile TV services. The current mobile TV offer covers nearly all of Italy’s largest cities and towns with nine TV channels that can be accessed via a 3 Italia mobile handset. The company aims to sign up some 500,000 users by the end of 2006 and predicts that Italian penetration of mobile TV services by all the operators should reach about 20% or 10 million people by 2010.
In the US, the mobile TV market should reach around 24 million users by 2010 according to IDC. The research firm estimates that video/TV services for mobile handsets would settle at around 10% penetration. This is compared to around 7 million US mobile data users who are pulling video content into their phones.
The huge spread in subscriber numbers between mobile video, mobile TV and other services (depending on how you define it) suggests that mobile video services remain an area that is still trying to find its footing in terms of consumer packagaing. Certainly, the Italians are plowing new ground through their deployment of an actual broadcast layer, Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld or DVB-H, the first large-scale deployment in Europe.
However, it’s already the case in many markets, including the US, that customers can access video content for their higher-speed 2.5G and 3G phones. This suggests that even as the Italian mobile TV launch confirms significant interest in mobile TV (one wonders how the launch would have fared had the national football team exited early instead of winning it all), it also confirms that the heavy lifting to market mobile TV services effectively in the larger context of mobile video, remains an elusive "goal".