Mobile TV revenues to hit £4.6bn by 2015

Mobile TV is to finally arrive as WiFi becomes a standard in mobile devices with revenues reaching £4.6bn by 2015

For years now the networks and the handset manufacturers have been telling us that this year is finally going to be the year of mobile TV and each year it isn’t.

So it’s tempting to treat the latest Juniper research with the same scepticism that we treat everything mobile and TV with. Certainly there are more people watching TV on iPhones etc and on trains but are they really going to do the same thing with streamed TV? Well Juniper think they are, and they think it’s all going to be down to wifi.

According to a new report published today (July 6) by Juniper Research there’s going to be a surge in applications which can take advantage of the increasing availability of free WiFi services and the application that will be boosted the most is the mobile TV industry with anticipated revenues of nearly £4.6 ($7) billion by 2015. Up from £2.11 ($3.2) billion in 2009, yes it really is that much. Juniper also estimate that the majority of the TV on mobile will be streamed rather than broadcast.

According to the report, mobile TV traffic over WiFi is expected to increase by 25x over the 2010-2015 period as streamed service penetration and usage levels – also fuelled by consumer smartphone adoption – rise sharply.

However, the report notes that despite the capacity relief that WiFi offers to cellular networks, greater mobile TV usage will still place the 3G and 3.5G networks under stress.

As report author Dr Windsor Holden pointed out, “Cellular networks are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver high quality mobile TV services at times of peak usage: thus, the World Cup has posed particular problems with large spikes in viewing figures. WiFi can ameliorate this in the short term, but this is only a partial remedy.”

The report suggests that while the deployment of LTE networks should reduce congestion, the use of unpaired spectrum – as in the forthcoming IMB trials by Vodafone, Orange and O2 – might be an alternative or complementary solution.

A short free whitepaper exploring the changing mobile TV landscape, Tuning in to Mobile TV is available to download.

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