The good news for mobile service providers: according to data from Mediamark Research & Intelligence, more than one-fifth of US mobile phone or PDA users are interested in watching live TV on their mobile device.
The bad news: Only 13.5 percent of all respondents said they would pay a subscription fee for mobile TV, and even among respondents who said mobile was a source of entertainment, the figure was just 34.5 percent.
The best news: people once scoffed at the very notion of consumers paying for TV, but that belief has been proven dramatically wrong. Most U.S. consumers get their TV from a satellite, cable or telco video provider.
The challenge: differentiated programming not available on broadcast networks was what drove the interest. Simply making existing content available on mobile networks might not move the needle much.
The current thinking by distributors is that making mobile video a feature available to fixed line video services is one way to drive business value from mobile video. That is helpful to an extent, but doesn't address the more fundamental problem, which is that video will put an order of magnitude or two greater strain on mobile networks, largely without benefit of revenue lift to compensate for the required network investment.
If a business--any business--faces a magnitude or two of incremental cost, it stands to reason that those costs simply must be covered, one way or the other. If advertising is insufficient--and it clearly will be--then paid viewing or higher direct bandwidth charges are the most-likely revenue generators.
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