About a third of all digital television sets will be cell phones by the year 2010. Roughly 1.9 million cell phones able to receive digital TV signals are expected to sell this year, and as many as 73.5 million will be in use by 2010, Boston-based analysis firm Strategy said in a new report.
"In the context of the cell phone industry, digital TV will be a relatively minor event," Strategy Analytics Principal Analyst David Mercer said May 31. "But for digital TV players, mobile devices represent an important new opportunity. The industry will push digital TV into people's hands, but it faces a challenge getting them to use it."
Strategy's report predicted 71 million digital television sets will be sold by the end of 2005, with handset makers Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG leading the push to get digital TV onto cell phones. Usability issues and government regulation might prove problematic in the beginning, however, the Strategy report noted.
Digital TV-equipped cell phones are anticipated to hold 36 percent of the world digital TV marker by 2010, compared to a 12-percent share for digital television-equipped computers, 24 percent for integrated digital TVs, and 64 percent for set-top boxes.
