The recent Ukraine versus England football match streamed over the internet was a landmark broadcast, but only because it was not shown on domestic tv. The event highlighted how broadcast entertainment no longer needs a tv to reach a mass audience.
Yet delivering tv to the most ubiquitous consumer device of all – the mobile handset – continues to be a struggle.
In Japan and South Korea, mobile tv has been widely adopted. According to ABI Research, 40million handsets in Japan alone – 90% of mobile users – receive mobile tv. But the service is known as free to air – tv broadcasts are received by handsets and laptops equipped with receiver and decode hardware. Mobile operators support the service, but they don't get paid for it.
"Mobile tv generically is broadcast tv," said Kent Walker, vice president of technology at Qualcomm, "although how it gets there is not crucial." For example, content could be sent over the internet or a 3G cellular network – unicast networks that deliver unique content to the user.
Mobile tv also implies tv on your phone, says Walker. "There are other markets emerging [laptops, netbooks], but it's dominated by handsets." Ronen Jashek, vp of marketing at mobile tv chip firm Siano Mobile Silicon agrees that mobile tv is a vaguely defined term. But he stresses it implies broadcasting. "It's a real time tv service that is high quality and high bit rate – at least 384kbit/s," said Jashek. "It can only happen with broadcast technology, not with 3G, 3.5G networks and maybe not 4G."
