The Ongoing Blind Belief In Mobile Broadcast TV
from the it's-gonna-be-huge...-except-that-it's-not dept
For years the big research companies have been putting out report after report after report claiming that mobile broadcast TV is going to be a huge moneymaker. However, there seems to be almost no real evidence to support this. In the 80s there was an attempt at mobile TV that went nowhere. Yet, the studies keep coming. The latest is from Juniper Research predicting that mobile-broadcast TV services will be a $6.6 billion market by the year 2012, which is very soon for a market that there are still a ton of questions around. This isn't to say that mobile video isn't an interesting service, but it's difficult to believe that the market for broadcast style TV is one that many people would ever pay for. There are many reasons why. First off, mobile users are quite often "on the go," meaning that they don't necessarily have the time or inclination to be watching broadcast TV programs. Instead, they're more likely to want to do mobile specific things -- short clip videos or videos that are more communication than content. Most importantly, however, it's difficult to believe that there's really money in mobile broadcast video because a combination of tools like TiVo and Slingbox mean that people aren't going to have to pay to watch what they want, when they want, where they want. I can already get mobile broadcast TV on my phone today -- thanks to a Slingbox and a smartphone with unlimited data. Why would I possibly pay more for it?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Oh...
Speaking of isn't it about time for a (not very) new report from some analyst predicting the demise of Microsoft?
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Mobile TV
The picture is 1/300th of the size of my screen at home and I can see a bunch of channels for $29.00 per month then if they charged me $29/300 or 9.6 cents per month. That is about what its worth to squint at a tiny screen ...
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Mobile TV
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By "Mobile TV" you mean what?
I'm not sure about the subscription part, but I have a handheld television (Obviously analog.. which is soon to die) which I have had for some time. No, I'm not one to be watching TV constantly on a 3 inch screen with analog noise.. (it works well with a good signal, but far out in the burbs it's miserable)
but it has come in handy numerous times, especially in the past when I wanted to keep up on a big news report or baseball game away from home...
Now I have a slingbox which streams to my cellphone. I LOVE IT. LOVE IT. It's not something I use a real lot, but on the occasions that I do, it's freakin awesome.
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They're trying to prevent another Napster.
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Flash forward to today. The home movie rental industry was created from that technology and studios stack up huge profits from those rentals. In other words, the studios fought this 'infringement' on their intellectual property right up until they figured out they could make money from it.
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