Here's a bold statement: "Watching television on your mobile is a stupid idea. Nobody will do it for any length of time at any sustained cost." (From Monday's Guardian - Emily Bell again: sorry, Emily, nothing personal....)
Compare and contrast with the following observations:
1) "We expect Western Europe to ramp up to over one million [TV-capable cellphone] units sold this year." (From my websit'es report on Strategy Analytics' latest research, which predicts global sales of such devices this year will reach eight million).
2) South Korean telco SK Telecom's broadcast TV to cellphone service currently has around 400,000 subscribers, paying €11/month each. (Korea Times)
3) All commercial trials of mobile TV in Europe which have so far published results have shown that subscribers are willing to pay €10-15 a month to watch TV on their mobiles, and that in practice they do so for between 20 and 25 minutes a day. (See http://www.dvb-h-online.org/services.htm, and be prepared to do a lot of digging!).
I'm not saying that means the issue is conclusively settled. For instance, a significant amount of TV viewing to mobiles takes place in the home, a usage segment likely to be taken over by pay-TV operators once they get their networked home entertainment technology in place. Moreover, the revenues quoted may not be sufficient to make a business case.
But surely, on the evidence, no-one can argue there isn't some demand for these services, if only from bored commuters on long commutes, and that they'll be prepared to pay something for it on an ongoing basis.
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