Fueled by a convergence between digital television and mobile phone usage, about 125 million people are expected to be regular viewers of TV on their cellular phones within the next five years, according to the results of a survey released Thursday by Informa Media. Sales of TV-enabled cell phones will grow from about 130,000 units this year to 83.5 million in 2010.
With digital TV expected to be in 144 million homes worldwide by the end of 2005, and global mobile subscribers approaching 2.1 billion at the same time, potential revenue from the market is staggering—if emerging technologies can be unified into a common standard.
"The degree to which these networks will become either competitive or complementary will ultimately determine the fate of market," Informa analyst David McQueen noted in the report.
Technology companies, handset manufacturers, and chip makers already are gearing up to meet the demand. In Korea, the world’s first satellite for mobile television broadcasting was launched earlier this year, and test groups already are receiving signals from it on Samsung mobiles. Samsung also has introduced its first TV phones in other parts of Europe, and Finnish handset maker Nokia is testing new multimedia devices that it expects to introduce to the global market in early 2006, with sales volume becoming significant by the second half of the year.
In order to make the mobile TV concept work, new video chips have been developed to pick up the constantly broadcast TV signals, which are expected to produce higher-quality images than are available via streaming video now. The new chips sit alongside conventional ones that process voice calls, text messaging, music, and video clips that are streamed on demand.
Netherlands-based Philips and U.S.-based Qualcomm both are scrambling to produce cost- and energy-efficient mobile TV chips before 2005 ends.
