The OMVC (Open Mobile Video Coalition) took a prominent position at NAB this year with the Mobile DTV Marketplace set up in the Central Lobby and a Mobile DTV Pavilion in the South Hall, as well as hosting a breakfast and speaking at several sessions. The OMVC is an association of nearly 900 TV broadcasters supporting the A/153 ATSC Mobile DTV Standard which was adopted by the ATSC in October 2009. This is an in-band system providing the mobile service as part of the terrestrial transmission within the same 6MHz channel used for ATSC HD and SD programming.
The mission of the OMVC is to accelerate the development of mobile digital TV in the US. The message coming across from them was loud and clear: Consumers want Mobile TV and the broadcasters are getting ready to provide it.
Information on the prospective demand came from a survey of 1,000 Online Users conducted in November 2009 by Magid Media Labs. This survey found that Local News and Information is the key driver with 88% of respondents interested in watching this content. Overall 46% of respondents rated Mobile DTV as very or somewhat appealing, but this figure jumped to 65% among Millennials (18-29 year olds). However when pushed as to intent to watch the figures dropped somewhat with 32% overall and 48% of Millennials saying that they probably or definitely would watch mobile TV. Interestingly 36% of respondents said that one of the places that they would watch TV on a mobile device would be in the home. The most popular devices for viewing were laptops or netbooks (49% of those who rated Mobile TV as appealing) and Smartphones (31% of those who rated Mobile TV as appealing).
A few years ago the perceived wisdom was that special short form video content was needed for mobile devices – particularly phones with their relatively small screens. Now that we have more empirical data the perceived wisdom is that consumers will watch full length video content on the "best available" screen at the time and place they want to view. What we don’t have in the US is much evidence that for mobile viewing consumers prefer linear or broadcast TV over VOD – whether streamed or downloaded - which is a very different business to the one proposed by the OMVC.
MediaFlo has been operational in the US over Verizon and AT&T networks for nearly 3 years now, but still hasn’t released any subscriber numbers, although public guesstimates put the figure in the low hundreds of thousands. MobiTV which provides a mixture of live TV and On-Demand Content had over 7 million subscribers last year – but some of these are in Canada as well. To date MediaFlo has only provided live linear content but announced during NAB that in the second half of this year this would be supplemented with on-demand content and interactive features. This may indicate that they have found mobile live TV to be a hard sell.
Sling Media which allows subscribers to access live TV – from their own service - and content from their DVR or PVR on remote devices including some smart phones is another hybrid model currently available in the US. Customer numbers are not available but Sling have commented that since the iPhone and other smartphones debuted their sales have increased by 45%.
Technically it is now also possible for cable operators to allow their customers to watch their VOD content on mobile devices via any suitable wireless technology. Arris and Motorola to name just two were both demonstrating this at The Cable Show in Los Angeles in May, however neither would admit to having sold the technology to any operators.
As would be expected with the increased penetration of the iPhone, other smart phones and netbooks the numbers of subscribers watching video on mobile devices is growing rapidly; 17.5 million at the end of 2009 an increase of 57% from a year before according to Nielsen’s Three Screen Report. Since this represents approximately 6% of US cell phone users, there is still plenty of room for growth here! Interestingly the average amount of time spent watching video remained constant at 3 hours and 37 minutes per month.
On May 24th the OMVC is launching the Washington DC. Consumer Showcase. This is essentially a test market planned to last for four months, to evaluate consumer reaction to advertising supported mobile TV. The Showcase is sponsored by LG Electronics and Samsung both of whom supply mobile TV receiving / decoding / tuning chipsets. 9 TV stations will be participating. The programming will be delivered over the same infrastructure as OTA home broadcasts, but will be modified to allow viewing on mobile devices. The technology has been tested on trains moving at 150mph – although I don’t think there are too many of these in Washington DC! Viewers taking part in the Showcase will be using a variety of devices including Mobile Phones, Mobile DTV receivers with playback functions, Mini Netbooks and a Wi-Fi access device that enables reception of mobile TV on other Wi-Fi equipped devices such as the iPhone, or Blackberry.
The objective of the Showcase is to test different business models, and measure and accelerate consumer interest in Mobile TV.
A newly formed consortia of 12 TV groups known as Pearl Mobile DTV will presumably be watching the Showcase very carefully. This JV includes Fox, NBC, Ion, Belo, Cox, Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek and Raycom. By aggregating their existing spectrum the JV will be able to offer mobile TV to 150 million consumers in the US. According to OMVC 45 stations in the US have started mobile DTV broadcasts.
So is mobile TV ready for prime-time in the US and what if anything does this mean for satellite?
Taking the first question: Consumers have an appetite for mobile video, that is now known. There remains the perennial problem of getting enough devices out at the right price point to stimulate demand, assuming of course that the content is right! Unlike FloTV Pearl will be run by broadcasters – experienced organizations that are used to meeting consumer demand for video which should prove to be an advantage as far as content is concerned. Free is usually a good price as far as the consumer goes and generally they have shown willing to accept advertising as part of that package. But the money has to come from somewhere and advertisers don’t pay if the audience isn’t there –the old chicken and egg situation. However the biggest stumbling block for Mobile TV is likely to be the shift in viewing habits that is occurring. TV viewing in the home has been moving away from linear to on-demand – initially via the PVR and now via the web - for several years now; so apart from certain time sensitive programming i.e. news, weather and sports it’s hardly realistic to assume that this trend will be reversed for mobile video. Early adopters of smartphones are likely to be the same consumers that are leading the move to watching web VOD. So unless mobile TV can encompass VOD, which for members of the OMVC like Pearl, means storage in the user device, with the exception of time sensitive programming broadcast mobile TV is likely to have a hard time creating a mass audience.
As for satellite – if existing programs are simply reformatted to be viewed on a mobile device this is likely to be done locally, so won’t create any additional demand for satellite capacity. If new mobile programming is created this would be different, but as yet there is no indication that Pearl or any other members of the OMVC intend to create new programming
The only direct to the consumer satellite mobile TV service in the US was ICO MIM otherwise known as DBSD which filed for bankruptcy last year before ever starting a commercial service. So for now at least I think the message to satellite operators is "Watch this Space" …..but don’t hold your breath! There is a market for video content delivered to a mobile device, but with the exception of news, weather and sports a mass audience for OTA broadcast programming is likely to evolve much more slowly than the audience for VOD.
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Elisabeth Tweedie has over 20 years experience at the cutting edge of new communication and entertainment technologies. She is the founder and President of Definitive Direction a consultancy that focuses on researching and evaluating the long term potential for new ventures, initiating their development and identifying and developing appropriate alliances. During her 10 years at Hughes Electronics she worked on every acquisition and new business that the company considered during her time there. www.definitivedirection.com She can be reached at: etweedie@definitivedirection.com +1 310-292-0755 or +44 (0)7768 610574.
