Not That Much Interest In Mobile TV

from the well-there-you-go dept

Mon, Sep 27th 2004 10:24pm — Mike Masnick

The last time I questioned whether or not anyone would actually be interested in mobile TV, I started receiving angry emails from people all over the world who apparently do want their mobile TV. It just strikes me as the wrong type of application. Applications on new platforms catch on because they let you do something different that you couldn't do before. There have been mobile, handheld TVs in the past, and they failed once the novelty wore off. It was hard to see how a broadcast mechanism (one way communication) was really all that compelling for someone on the go. It might be different if there were additional features or content that would specifically work in this environment, but simply shifting TV to mobile phones seems like an (expensive) dead end. It appears I'm not the only one to think so. A new study shows that only 13% of users are really excited about the idea. Others are intrigued, and it's quite likely these stats will change over time. It just seems like a lot of talk over an expensive to implement system that appears to be more of a novelty than anything else. People use their mobile phones to communicate -- and whatever the "killer app" is for mobile data, it's not going to be about simply shifting existing TV broadcasts to the phone, but something much more interactive.

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Precision Blogger, 28 Sep 2004 @ 6:13am

Free mobile TV is inevitable; there's no market ..
In the long run, throughput to mobile phones and screen resolution will be good enough for mobile TV. But you'll be able to get your feeds from a million web sites streaming video, so you won't pay to get it from a broadcaster.

It's a pitiful medium for ads too, so where will the sponsors come from?

- The Precision Blogger
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
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Mark, 28 Sep 2004 @ 7:03am

mobile TV
13% of all cell phone users would be a pretty good market. The numbers might change if they brought more people into the survey, but still ... that's a glass half-full, glass half-empty situation.

If you're getting angry emails from people who disagree with you, wouldn't the better response be to listen to what they have to say and take that into consideration the next time you post on the topic? You just seem to be talking at them with the same argument as before.
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Ed, 28 Sep 2004 @ 7:35am

A mobile broadcast success story
The Sony radio Walkman, which merely duplicated the functions of a stationary radio, proved that there's a market for broadcast-only media for people on-the-go.
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