Latest NSR Report Finds Mobile TV and Video Growth to be Driven by Broadcasters and Consumers

However, Lack of Advertisement Accountability and System Fragmentation Will Prevent the Sector from Reaching Near Term Scale

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Northern Sky Research (NSR) today released findings from its latest report, Mobile TV and Mobile Video, 2nd Edition – A Complete 360-degree Analysis. The report examines market and technology trends influencing mobile TV stakeholders’ participation and provides regional forecasts for broadcast and unicast distribution. The report indicates that a combination of converging trends will allow mobile TV to experience considerable growth, but a number of inhibitors will prevent the sector from reaching its full monetization potential.

Mobile TV and mobile video services offered over broadcast and unicast distribution are projected to grow almost ten-fold from an estimated user base of over 57 million at the end of 2007 to 566 million users in 2013. Much of that growth will come from free broadcast services and unicast video as a result of broadcaster involvement in mobile broadcast distribution, 3G network expansion and user/operator involvement in user-generated content (UGC) and web-mobile social networking integration.

Global service revenues comprising subscription, advertisement and transactional revenue are projected to reach $9 billion by 2013. Advertisement will exhibit the highest growth as a result of the expected proliferation of free broadcast services and ad-supported video. However, despite the long-term promise of the highly-engaging mobile video advertisement, NSR highlights the embryonic stage of mobile advertisement and believes that by 2013, mobile TV advertisement revenue will still be far from reaching its full potential.

Based on the user adoption successes of free services in Japan and Korea, NSR expects that broadcasters in the process of digitizing will be vital during the initial phase of audience building and that broadcast standards fragmentation will possibly never disappear. Although network fragmentation is not desirable, its occurrence at other levels of the mobile TV supply chain can more negatively affect mobile TV growth. “The emergence of enabling platforms bringing liquidity to distribution, advertisement and application building will play key a role towards cooperatively overcoming current fragmentation issues” stated Carlos Placido, Analyst for NSR and author of the report. “Platforms will help to make the mobile TV ecosystem efficient enough to attract the much-needed targeted advertisement revenue that would ultimately propel this application into a virtuous economic cycle.”

About The Report

Mobile TV and Mobile Video, 2nd Edition – A Complete 360-degree Analysis provides an in-depth assessment of the trends affecting mobile TV each regional market. The report is the result of inputs obtained through interviews with leading industry players in the telco-mobile, cable, satellite, mobile TV distribution and service aggregation sectors, as well as extensive research of trends taking place in the adjacent areas of mobile TV. The study provides pertinent regional data regarding growth of broadcast (terrestrial and hybrid satellite-terrestrial) and unicast mobile TV users; revenue from subscriptions, transactional content and advertisement; and broadcast-enabled handset sales. Further, the study provides a fully customizable set of unicast and broadcast business model spreadsheets.