The sound of white noise coming from across the pond in England is deafening.
A new article in the Guardian practically sounds the death bell and says that fewer than 1% of Brits have signed up. Should we cue up Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”?
According to the Guardian, 3.9% of the U.K’s 45 million mobile subscribers have watched user generated content on their phones.
That would be a video you shoot on your phone and send to a friend via MMS. This is respectable. It might even be enough for network operators to squeeze out some cash to pay for the 3G systems used to deliver the multimedia messages.
Mobile TV services, though, don’t seem to fare nearly so well.
Estimates place the total number of regular mobile TV watchers (i.e., subscribers to services) at just 450,000. That’s 1%. One percent is not enough to help the operators recoup the massive investment made in building the networks used to deliver mobile TV.
While the numbers coming from England paint a bleak picture, U.S. operators are silent on the uptake of mobile TV services.
For instance, Verizon Wireless recently reported its second quarter results. Even though its V CAST TV service was in operation during the full quarter, no subscriber numbers were broken out in the quarterly results.
Verizon was happy to point out the increases in its data revenues (70%), but didn’t go so far as to show us which services earned what.
Right now, V CAST TV is still only available in a few dozen markets and is only viewable on two handsets. Verizon will add more markets and handsets over time.
Sprint also offers mobile TV via its 3G PowerVision services. I have demoed these.
While surfing channels and finding interesting content to watch is relatively painless, the viewing experience can be iffy. Things like stops and starts, out-of-sync audio and grainy images abound.
Same goes for watching YouTube videos on handsets… even when streamed via Wi-Fi and not the WWAN.
What do you think? How many of you have watched or subscribed to mobile TV programming?
- Google Is Building A Mobile Phone | August 2, 2007
- RIM Gets Clearance To Sell BlackBerrys In China | July 5, 2007
- Verizon Wireless Subscribers Send 10 Billion SMSs In June | July 24, 2007
- Apple iPhone Poised To Boost Mobile Video Watching | July 20, 2007
- Could you be paying $1,000 per MB for SMS? | July 28, 2007
