Nokia: Mobile TV in turmoil
You know things can’t be all good with mobile TV when one of its biggest proponents - Nokia favours the DVB-H standard - admits that rollout aren’t going as well as the company had hoped.
Head of internet services t the Finnish handset maker, Niklas Savander, told Reuters that broadcast mobile TV “is a bit in turmoil… We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads. Roll out is slower than also we anticipated a couple of years ago.”
Nokia may not have predicted it, but from the time mobile TV started being discussed, a lot of other people did. The success of downloads is probably due not only to their greater accessibility - everyone can get 3G, not everyone can get DVB-H programming - but also it seems to suit mobile usage patterns better. A three minute snack TV program is handy when you’re waiting for the bus, a 30 minute broadcast TV program less so.
A 30 minute program is great when you’re commuting - unfortunately the coverage on the trains/tube isn’t so great. I currently download shows from the BBC iPlayer’s iPhone service. Perfect for watching / listening on the move.
Streaming is great if you have consistently good coverage - as is DVB-H. But for those of us in the real world, a VideoPodCast is probably the best experience to chase. Until TiVo move into the phone PVR space
Posted by Terence Eden on April 14th, 2008 at 10:42 am.[...] Nokia: Mobile TV in turmoil [...]
Posted by ZebraMobile » Blog Archive » Mobile TV in turmoil on April 14th, 2008 at 6:13 pm.@Terrence: Agreed - I use a couple of Freeview tuners in my Mac and ‘EyeTV’ which gives a poor approximation of Tivo-like service in it’s newest version. I sync via iTunes to the iPhone, but the other option that has worked well is to setup my own video podcast feed for the E61.
Posted by Ben Smith on April 14th, 2008 at 8:15 pm.