Mobile TV Standards: Winners Emerging One Region at a Time

Over the last few months, various market developments have spawned a new dynamic in the broadcast mobile TV marketplace. With the European Commission favoring DVB-H as the Pan-European broadcast mobile TV standard, AT&T abandoning Modeo and DVB-H in favor of MediaFLO, and Crown Castle’s subsequent divestiture of Modeo’s spectrum, the lines defining a strong regional base for various standards are becoming clear.

IMS Research is forecasting that by 2011 the Americas region will account for 60% of worldwide FLO subscribers. Similarly, Europe is forecast to claim 61% of worldwide DVB-H / DVB-SH subscribers. Other standards, such as T-DMB and ISDB-T, are also expected to become increasingly region-specific between 2007 and 2011, with an increasing number of these standards’ subscribers coming respectively from Korea and Japan.

Anna Hunt, Research Director at IMS Research, comments, “Operator and government decisions about which mobile TV standard to deploy in each country or region depend on a number of variables including spectrum availability, existing cellular and DTT infrastructure, market needs, and national political and economic interests. This has resulted in a situation where in certain regions, different standards gained a distinct advantage in building the consensus required to deploy a broadcast network, thereby gaining the first-mover advantage so key in a standards war.”

Links: Report Synopsis; IMS Research