Mobile TV, a business that has so far been slow to take off thanks to the chicken-and-egg situation networks and customers find themselves in (most subscribers won’t pay but advertisers won’t bankroll things without higher take-up), will have 140 million subscribers and 4.4 billion euro ($6.4 billion) revenue by 2011, Screen Digest’s latest report reckons.
Curiously, North America is forecast for the largest growth spurt – subscribers up 20-fold to 28.8 million and revenue up 50-fold to 1.8 billion euros ($2.65 billion) by 2011. Indeed, Asia, despite currently boasting some 15 million broadcast mobile TV users thanks to mostly free access, will generate less revenue than North America or Europe – the former growing to make up 40.5 percent of global mobile TV revenue, the latter 42.5 percent. Asia would constitute just 17 percent of the market (well, if they will give it away for free… ).
Recent M:Metrics research showed just 0.60 percent (US) and 0.92 percent (UK) of mobile subscribers used mobile TV.