Never Mind The (Lack Of) Interest: Mobile TV Marches On

Announcements about mobile TV continue apace this week: Nokia announced another DVB-H trial, this one in Spain; Belgian operator Mobistar signed a deal with a broadcaster to start a pilot channel over its network later this year; and US wireless tower giant Crown Castle says it wants to use its holdings a nationwide DVB network akin to Qualcomm's MediaFLO plans.

So it looks like the industry is about to head into another mess -- just like 3G, just like WAP, just like MMS -- where technology outpaces thinking through service offerings or business models and results in a disappointingly slow uptake. Also this week, researchers Forrester released a report pointing out some of these pitfalls. The top takeaway being that it's found little consumer "enthusiasm or demand" for mobile TV, an unwillingness to pay for it and low desire to see mobile TV functionality in forthcoming devices. But that won't slow down companies pushing the technology to market -- never mind they don't have any real services beyond live TV on their minds yet.

Forrester says, "The unique attributes of the mobile environment will render decades of consumer TV viewing data irrelevant. While operators and content owners think snippets of regular TV's broadcasted news, sports and weather are necessary, they are far from sufficient - and no one knows what will be." The company's too keen on short clips as the answer for my taste, but the point remains: there's got to be something more than live simulcasts.

It's the same thing here as with mobile music. One main thrust is platform irrelevance: the idea that users can access their content (video and TV in this case) on any platform or device. But the second thrust is new services: how can mobile connectivity come into play to create more useful and compelling services?

Like I said above, the mobile industry's track record at this sort of thing doesn't instill much confidence. WAP was like the Web, only in your pocket. MMS was like SMS, but with pictures. 3G was like 2G, only faster. You'd think that vendors and operators would have learned by now that consumers don't buy into technology when it comes to mobiles. There's two fundamentally different questions on the table here. New services are too often based around the "what can it do?" question -- which is concerned with the functionality of the technology. But what consumers want to know is "what can I do?" -- that's about services.