Is there a business model for mobile TV?

The number of mobile TV users continues to grow but there is still no proven business model so far to market the service, researchers at Infocom say.

"Japan, South Korea and Italy are the leading markets for broadcast-based mobile TV services but mobile TV subscriber growth in these markets is driven mainly by free or partly-free access and rather large handset availability, Infocom says.

Much could change with time, but there are some features and services for which there is in fact no apparent stand alone business model. Consider the Wi-Fi hotspot business. For an increasing number of service providers, the business model is fixed broadband, and Wi-Fi access is simply an added feature of the broadband service.

The same thing appears to be happening in the multi-channel video business, as service providers test the idea of "TV Everywhere," where paying for a fixed video subscription also allows access to video from PCs and mobile phones.

Advertising might help, but possibly not as much as people suppose. At this point, it appears possible that the mobile TV business model is fixed network multi-channel video, much as Wi-Fi now is a feature available to broadband access subscribers.