Mobile TV Device Volumes Will Not Decline in 2009

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
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Almost 30 million Mobile TV users will be added in 2009 and this year’s Mobile TV devices-sold volume is likely to increase by as much as 2% compared to 2008.

TORONTO, Ontario — The Second Anniversary Issue (No. 9) of the quarterly TeleAnalytics Mobile TV Tracking Service (TMTS) calculates that the end 2009 Mobile TV user count will be in the 80.8 million to 81.9 million range. Despite the financial crisis, Mobile TV device sales will at worst remain flat, but an increase of up to 2% may be witnessed with respect to the 2008 sales total.

Issue No. 9 also analyzes the complete set of Q1-09 adoption figures, summarizes the key Mobile TV developments up to early July 2009 and provides detailed, quantitative, short-term end-09 projections. Highlights from Issue No.9 follow. All figures refer to Mobile TV Broadcast networks, and unless otherwise noted, they refer to worldwide Mobile TV sales and user counts. Sales-adoption data for “Mobile DVB-T” and Analog TV handheld reception are not included. The data sets quoted and the end-year projections made are based on the TeleAna-lytics Mobile TV sales-adoption database, the only commercially available database of Mobile TV (Broadcast) sales and adoption. The database’s sales-adoption time series start at the beginning of Mobile TV Times (May 2005, the SKT launch month) and currently incorporates data sets from as late as May 2009.

Korea: In Q1-09, Korean Mobile TV (both DMBs) device volumes rebounded and were 3% higher than the volumes witnessed in the same quarter one year earlier. SKT celebrated its 2 millionth S-DMB subscriber in mid-May. The Korean automotive Mobile TV market segment is the first Mobile TV market segment anywhere in the world to show serious signs of significant saturation. At the end of Q1-09, the Korean automotive Mobile TV pene-tration exceeded 46% of the total addressable (covered) number of Korean passenger car registrations.

Japan: Japanese Mobile TV handset volumes have been significantly affected by the financial crisis and are likely to remain around the 6.2 million per quarter mark for the balance of the year. In Q1-09, One-Seg pene-tration among the total number of Japanese handsets sold climbed to 81% from 61% one year earlier. End Q1-09 Mobile TV (One-Seg) penetration in the 12+ market segment stood at 39.4%.

China: H1-09 CMMB device sales disappointed the CMMB vendors and SARFT’s commercialization drive has up to now proven to be badly conceived and executed. Things are likely to improve in H2-09, but SARFT is quite unlikely to reach its 2009 target (10 million).

EU: European Mobile TV is basically stagnant and as many as half a million DVB-H handsets may be sold this year, due mainly to the normal device replacement process rather than due to new DVB-H adds.

Brazil: One-Seg device pricing started falling. Brazilian ISDB-T USBs cost $225 in Spring 2008, now they cost just over $50. Additionally, handsets just over the $400 mark were recently introduced (the LG Scarlet). The average quarterly 2009 device volume is likely to be more than 28% higher than the volume witnessed in Q4-08 and the Brazilian Mobile TV market has started to get flooded by automotive ISDB-T STBs, which have questionable prospects for more than one reason.

US: FLO started expanding shortly after the US ASO. ATSC-M/H is getting started in late summer. For both networks, 2010 will be the pivotal year.

Air Interfaces: This year, Mobile TV device sales in Japan and Brazil (ISDB-T) will exceed 27 million units. T-DMB will close the year with more than 16 million users, all of which originated from a single country (Korea).

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