The notions of M-commerce, M-Marketing and Mobile TV are perhaps not yet very common in our country, but they no longer pertain to the world of science fiction. The Informa office estimates that 300 million people worldwide will use Mobile TV by the end of 2012, 100 million thanks to cellular technology and the remaining 200 million via DVB-H-type broadcasting. Asia is one of the most dynamic regions, and Japan more specifically is today a leader in the domain of television services on mobiles.

In the rest of the world, and in Europe in particular, the future economic model of personal mobile television is still a real industrial and commercial puzzle. We met with Pascal Poty of the Walloon Telecommunications Agency to know more about the advancements in this domain.

“The know-how is very much there,” says AWT's mobile expert, “but the current system lacks coherence. On the one side, there's the content editors, on the other, the broadcasters and operators, and none of the actors in this new ecosystem seem prepared to take part of the risk involved with launching personal television mobile services. A big part of the problem is the chronic incapacity to create a viable business model which works for all of these actors. Except in Japan, where 60% of mobile users have terminals compatible with personal mobile television services, the viability of the personal mobile television market remains unproven. Even in South Korea, an otherwise trendy country, personal mobile television, based on an advertisement model, hardly takes off. It is true that with an audimat of 1,6%, personal mobile television pales in comparision with digital television (22.6%) or cable television (11.2%) .

If the success of video sequence consumption on mobile phones is growing, these are mostly 'stock' videos (so downloaded files, mostly from sharing platforms). On the other hand, videostreams (streaming, personal mobile television) has a hard time finding its way.

Yet several personal mobile television networks which use the DVB-H standard are operational within Europe. In Belgium the actors are stalling to come up with a viable economic model including a division of the investments and profits which is acceptable to everyone involved. From this point of view it seems clear that future players in the domain of personal mobile television will not be able to rely solely on advertising incomes to raise the financing necessary for this type of offer. It will be necessary to introduce a 'mixed' model, including activation costs to better identify the customer profiles but also with subscriptions for programme packages, as well as new profits generated by interactive services.

Research shows that the subscription fees will have to be kept very low (around €5/month) in order for the personal mobile television services to reach a large public.

Today the Belgian mobile operators utilise 3G cellular technology to bring television to mobile phones. However, this technology was not designed for this type of services, making it less effective than DVB-H; this leads to a higher cost structure compared to the number of existing customers (saturation risks). DVB-H may offer better image quality but this argument is apparently not enough to convince the public. Most pilot experiments have shown that the current consumption of mobile television services and video works following an interstitial model (not during transportation, pauses, 'dead' time, but rather at home and during the evening).

Mobile has its own characteristics. It is above all a contextual and geolocalizable medium. So interaction with the environment becomes essential. These interactions will be the key to the success of future mobile television services.

Europe: uneven spread

Several operators already have extended networks in Europe, encouraged by the European decision to keep DVB-H as reference standard. Among the most developed countries in this aspect are Finland, Austria, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy.

However, the growth of new customers happens in non-linear ways and remains closely linked to uniting events such as large sports manifestations.

A particular case: Japan

The Japanese background remains particular because it works like a very closed ecosystem where the manufacturers have very close bonds with the mobile operators. The new generation terminals are now equipped with a TV tuner (One-Seg), making television service reception possible. These services now go beyond the simple retransmission of television signals. There is also a progressive availability of specific formats (contextual and geolocalizable), and also a expansion of the offer towards M-Marketing and M-commerce solutions (distribution and automated access to promotional coupons and short cuts to transactional portals).

Finally, other problems related to the internetisation of the mobile industry (package data subscription plans) will lead to an increase in offers and actors on the market of television services and mobile video. With phenomenons such as 'deportalisation' of content consumption, we will witness the rise of new applications, with a position rivalling or complementary to mobile television services and broadcasting. This is the case for VOD, for placeshifting and timeshifting (Orb, SlingMedia), for streaming (Qik), and for the users' autogenerated content (YouTube, DailyMotion,...)