Mobile Innovation

—MobiTV Adds CBS: MobiTV will offer a CBS channel as part of its $10/month services, offering full episodes of hits such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Numb3rs, CSI: NY, and The Young and the Restless. The shows will be available on AT&T and Sprint Nextel the day after they appear on TV. It will also include video-on-demand news sport and comedy clips from CBS Mobile.

—Player X, Admob Team Up: UK-based Player X and mobile advertising company Admob to offer integrated marketing campaigns that include advertising across AdMob’s global network. The main centre will be the portal Player X runs for O2 UK, and the service will allow content partners to track conversions from their ad campaigns’ right through to download. (release)

More after the jump...

—T-Mobile Launches G1 YouTube Channel: T-Mobile has launched a YouTube channel to teach people how to use the G1, with customers able to post questions and receive written and video answers from T-Mobile’s experts and other customers. I’m not sure how much use it will get, but it’s likely cheap and the video part makes demonstrations easy. (Mobile Market Magazine)

—Kenya Bans Ringtones: Some African news sites are reporting that Kenya’s new Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act not only restricts media and gives the postal service strong powers to invade private communications searching for “obscene” content also makes it illegal to personalize a mobile phone: “Mobile phone owners are not allowed to change the facial appearance of their handsets or customise the phone features to their convenience. The law declares reprogramming of mobile phones illegal. You cannot even install fancy ringtones!” One commenter argued that the law is merely stating that “you cannot change the IMEI number or reprogam it”. I haven’t read the legislation, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was just incredibly poorly written. (The Citizen and Daily Nation)

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Posted by Mobile Innovation at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

TV enabled handsets will reach a staggering 244 million devices by 2011, according to a new report.

This is almost double the number previously forecast, and was reached by a detailed look into the likely mobile TV launch dates and the uptake rate expected in 55 countries.

The report was published in the US by Multimedia Research Group, but was written by Rethink Research Associates in the UK. It shows the rapid increase anticipated in handsets annually, with huge leaps during 2009 especially (see graph below), when 53 million broadcast TV enabled handsets are expected to ship.

"There are over 80 mobile TV trials all over the world and already there are a handful of services launched. The bulk of those trials are already committed to turn into genuine services, in some cases with a nationwide footprint, in other countries in limited regions," said report author Peter White, principal analyst at Rethink.

"This forecast is not including video services which are streamed over a cellular network, because that has largely been a slow burn business, due to its low screen resolution and the careful management it needs so that it doesn't interfere with voice. Most of these new handsets will deliver QVGA quality screens, where voices and lips are synchronised, where there is no shadowing on the screen, and where the resolution is good enough to watch for 30 minutes at a time and beyond," White said.

Initiatives in Japan and South Korea have been launched for some time using technologies which are largely unfavoured in the rest of the world, but last year Italy launched two DVB-H based services and now Qualcomm's MediaFLO is aggressively going after the US market with deals that take in Verizon Wireless and AT&T as resellers.

Around 80 pilots have been carried out globally and the trickle of current services will reach a torrent of some 50 to 60 services during 2009, led by developments in China and Asia Pacific, where the report says 105 million handsets will ship. It says this will be followed by strong showings in Western Europe and the US, which will ship 73 million and 40 million mobile TV capable handsets by 2011 respectively.

According to the report, service revenues from the global mobile TV market will exceed $24bn annually by 2011, with Western Europe likely to lead in revenue terms at over $10bn, followed by the USA and Canada at $7.7bn, and China and the Far East lagging at $5bn, despite higher usage levels.

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Posted by Mobile Innovation at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

3UK, Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone have announced the launch of a technical trial of another mobile TV format, TDtv - the UMTS TD-CDMA-3GPP Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) standard-based solution. The TDtv trial, which is scheduled to run to the end of the year, will test key performance and deployment aspects of the mobile TV technology. TDtv base stations provided by IPWireless have been deployed on 12 cell sites covering parts of Bristol in the UK to provide broadcast services to TDtv enabled smart phones.

MobiTV, Inc., the international mobile and broadband television services company, will provide the client application, as well as facilitate the mobile content and operational components of the trial.

TDtv operates in the universal unpaired 3G spectrum bands that are available across Europe and Asia at 1900MHz and 2010MHz. It allows UMTS operators to further utilize their existing spectrum and network infrastructure to offer subscribers attractive mobile TV and multimedia packages without impacting other voice and data 3G services.

Professor Michael Walker, Director of Research and Development at Vodafone said: "Trials are an extremely important part of our strategic product development. In the case of mobile TV, there are a number of technologies emerging that must be fully explored so that we have a comprehensive understanding of how the technologies work and the experience they will offer. Currently the most interesting technologies are the variants of MBMS and DVB-H and this trial forms part of the MBMS assessments we are undertaking."

As TDtv is based on the 3GPP family of standards, integration of TDtv with WCDMA on both the network and device side is simplified. Jointly testing TDtv will allow the operators to assess the coexistence of TDtv channels with neighbouring TD-CDMA and WCDMA networks.

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Posted by Mobile Innovation at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In an effort to encourage greater adoption of broadcast mobile TV services and accelerate service deployment, Motorola and Nokia have announced that they will work to achieve interoperability among their DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) enabled mobile devices and network services. The handset manufacturers will work together to support solutions based on open DVB-IPDC standards available for operator partners interested in deploying multi-vendor mobile TV services and trials in 2006 and onward.

Among the many digital technologies available to deliver mobile TV services, Motorola and Nokia both view DVB-H as an effective technology for deploying broadcast mobile TV. DVB-H technology offers high service level quality, low battery consumption and offers the end-user the ability to simultaneously receive broadcasts while using other mobile services such as telephony and internet access on their device.

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Posted by Mobile Innovation at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)