Q2-09 was a Record-Setting Mobile TV Quarter

In Q2-09, 6.97 million new Mobile TV users were added to the worldwide total. In terms of Mobile TV device sales, Q2-09 proved to be the best quarter ever and 11.57 million Mobile TV devices were sold

TORONTO, Ontario — Issue No. 10 of the quarterly TeleAnalytics Mobile TV Tracking Service (TMTS) quantitatively substantiates the position taken back in Q3-08 that the worldwide Mobile TV adoption/sales would not be much upset by the financial crisis, and rapid growth would resume by early 2010 or before. It is noted that the cumulative mid-year (H1-09) Mobile TV device sales were only 3% below the corresponding H1-08 figure.

Issue No. 10 also analyzes the complete set of the Q2-09 Mobile TV adoption/sales figures and discusses the key Mobile TV developments up to early October 2009. The Special Topics section of Issue No. 10 provides an update on the DTT-MoTV developments in South America, a region of the world that was very recently formally taken over by Japanese ISDB-T technology. A very promising Mobile TV market of more than 305 million people is in the making.

All figures in the report refer to Digital Mobile TV Broadcast networks and, unless otherwise noted, they refer to worldwide Mobile TV sales and user counts. Following the DVB Project, DVB-T is not considered a Mobile TV technology and the related data sets are reported separately. The data sets quoted and the analysis of the Q2-09/Q3-09 developments are based on the TeleAnalytics Mobile TV sales/adoption database, the only commercially available database of Mobile TV (Broadcast) sales and adoption covering the period from May 2005 (the beginning of the Mobile TV times) to August 2009.

Korea: Q2-09 was the best-ever Korean Mobile TV quarter. The volume of Mobile TV devices sold was 21% higher than in any other previous quarter and the new Mobile TV adds reached an all-time record of 1.85 million.

Japan: The crisis hit the Japanese One-Seg market much harder than the Korean DMBs but in Q2-09 all Japanese metrics improved very significantly. The quarter proved to be the best ever for automotive Mobile TV receiver sales, the number of new Mobile TV adds climbed 21% higher than in the previous quarter and the Mobile TV devices sold volume approached pre-crisis levels.

China: SARFT’s CMMB commercialization drive has up to now been proven to be flawed and the Chinese environmental conditions are uncooperative to any rapid Mobile TV adoption. SARFT will very likely miss both its 2009 and 2010 targets (10 and 50 million, respectively) by far, and today there is no reason to assume that in its early years the Chinese Mobile TV developments will be any smoother or richer than Chinese IPTV developments have been.

EU: European Mobile TV is basically stagnant and apparently KPN needed the eight months between January and September in order to add 10K DVB-H users. T-Mobile-DE is hard-pressed to offload the German soccer traffic from its 3G network; it may try to restart the German DVB-H. The French DVB-H may not be totally dead yet. It will take some time for the recent IMB technological entry to prove that it can make it after four years of trying, and that the MNOs’ expressed support will result in any TDD transmitters making it onto 3G FDD rooftops.

Brazil: Brazilian Mobile TV is performing somewhat better than the Brazilian DTT, and the recent formalization of the ISDB-T conquest of South America is analyzed/dimensioned in detail in the Special Topics section of Issue No. 10.

US: ICO is still in Chapter 11 proceedings. The ATSC-M/H Washington trial scheduled for late summer has not yet started. In Q3-09, FLO-TV started implementing some of the very significant product-distribution changes hinted at in the first six months of the year. The agreement with Rentrak in terms of FLO’s audience measurement is the world’s first for any Mobile TV operator, PAY or FTA.

Russia: Three DVB-H licenses were recently awarded for the Moscow area, and two are likely to be exercised. Additionally, the Russian government plans to spend almost $4.25 billion on the Russian DVB-T infrastructure.

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