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Mobile TV technologies have multiplied rather than consolidated, and despite an early dominant lead by DVB-H, in what seemed a two horse race with Korea’s T-DMB, there are now at least 15 separate Mobile TV technologies that operators can bring to bear, with a variety of business models.  
 
In the worlds of one investor “So it’s just a mess?” But while it might appear haphazard for operators, the world is settling on a handful of these technologies which are being forced together into a number of blended services working side by side on the same device, and increasingly it is not the technology choice that is difficult to make – that is often dictated by local geography or local politics – instead the right business model is the hardest to grasp.  
 
During the past year those countries that have adopted a “free to air” policy have shifted far more mobile TV handsets – but this does not mean that any operators are making money out of these networks and devices, and sometimes cellular operators are forced to back Mobile TV, not because there is a crystal clear business model to do so, but because it would leave them as the odd one out for NOT launching it, and drive up their churn.  
 
Japan has now shipped more than 20 million 1 seg ISDB-T mobile handsets, and Korea has 8 million T-DMB devices, many of which are not handsets. Chip suppliers and device makers are flocking to free to air services, which are driving the transition to Mobile TV services, but it does not guarantee any improved ARPU for cellular operators, and many Western Operators, such as Verizon and AT&T, are now looking at Mobile TV purely as a threat to be countered rather than a service to be offered.  
 
Broadcasters need Mobile TV and the potential future advertising revenues that it threatens to bring, which is why technology suppliers have targeted the free to air model across the world, and the arrival of such services sets a deadline by which time every cellular operator has to have a clear strategy for how to co-exist with this important new technology – or risk huge desertions from its established customer base – driving churn out of control.  
 
Across a number of key Mobile TV technologies this report forecasts 301 million specialist handset devices that can receive one or other format of Mobile TV will be sold by 2012. A further 60 million devices which are NOT handsets will be added to that, making total shipments of 361 million devices which can view Mobile TV. But that’s probably not the key important fact that comes out of this report. Handset transition is key to the emergence of Mobile TV services, and this is seen to be more than 3 times faster in a market where a free to air Mobile TV service is available.  
 
If cellular operators want to get to a point where paid Mobile TV services generate ARPU, the short-cut route is to provoke the mass transition to Mobile TV enabled handsets using a free to air service, and from there kick on to offer premium services. Other revenues are available from EPG triggered advertising, channel change advertising, and media asset sales, to augment free to air TV service payments, but once again, these rely on there being enough handsets in the wild for mass adoption of TV viewing habits to take place.  
 
Until cellular operators perceive a clear and realizable business model, they will remain hesitant and all the drive behind Mobile TV will come from chip makers, handset suppliers and broadcasters. We believe that the Mobile TV dam will not burst until well into 2010.  
 
Companies that should buy this report include: Broadcasters, broadcast network operators, telcos, cable, satellite and IPTV operators, mobile TV operators and equipment and software suppliers at management and marketing levels including encoder manufacturers, DRM specialists, handset makers, chip designers and sellers of advertising insertion systems.  
 
A corporate license which includes permission to distribute throughout the company, plus the use of graphs and data in corporate presentations and brochures, costs $5,000. Individual subscriptions cost $2,000  
The Core prediction Spreadsheet can be bought for a $1,000 supplement  
 
Contact Peter White by phone at: +44 (0)1590 624530, or by e-mail at: peter@rethinkresearch.biz to order or for executive summary.