2008 Mobile TV Roundup

2008 has been a bad year for Mobile TV. All the hype and expectations from 2007 died down early this year. From that point it has been a downward spiral for the Mobile TV market. Mobile Europe has a good summary on Mobile TV in 2008. Interesting highlights as follows:

• The most high profile event of the year was probably a bad news story: the demise of MFD [Mobiles Fernsehen Deutschland]'s DMB-based service in Germany, finally withdrawn after struggling for the best part of two years to increase viewer figures, and as MFD shifted its strategy towards DVB-H.
• The one big success has been the continued growth of 3 Italia's DVB-H service, cunningly launched on the back of the 2006 football World Cup (won by Italy), which now has more than 850,000 subscribers and has added a free to air bouquet to its pay TV offering
• Yann Courqueux, director of broadcast development, IPTV and mobile TV at Thomson, is optimistic about the potential of the Russian market, where three operators are set to launch services in 2009
• On the technology side, supporters of DVB-H and DVB-SH feel 2008 was the year when their standard established a clear lead over its rivals.
• The consumers have noticed during 2008 has been the appearance of a new generation of handsets and mobile devices, including the Nokia N96 and the BlackBerry Storm.
• Another service that some believe will be crucial to the prospects of mobile TV in the longer term is DVR capability, but there were no significant steps forward in this area in Europe during 2008.
• It will be at least two more years before we begin to see mass adoption of mobile TV across Europe

Complete article here.