.FLYINGHEAD INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
.TITLE Mobile TV and the great vendor conspiracy
.AUTHOR Monte Silver
.SUMMARY What is Mobile TV and why do we care? In this absolutely fascinating analysis, Monte Silver takes you behind the scenes of the mobile market to help you understand how the motivations of the handset vendors might impact your mobile phone experience.
.DEPT
Since the introduction of cellular data networks, data applications have enjoyed a constant hype. Attending mobile trade shows, one could easily identify the annual killer-application. Mobile Internet, MMS (multimedia/picture messaging), streaming and Mobile TV have all enjoyed much more than their 15 minutes of fame, but none have delivered anything but a trickle of early-adopters.
Mobile TV means the streaming of television content to the mobile phone. As with streaming in the PC/Internet world, Mobile TV involves the simultaneous delivery and viewing of the content. Nothing is saved or downloaded on the phone. Mobile TV can be contrasted to a "download first and watch later" experience. As with email attachments, a downloaded file (which can even be a TV episode) resides on the mobile phone and can be viewed at will.
While there can be no single explanation for this failure to fire up the consuming public, the unspoken truth is that these services have failed mainly because they been generated to serve the interests of industry, and primarily network and handset vendors. Unfortunately, the user is low on the totem pole of interests. Although we all hold devices and constantly fiddle with their buttons, we refuse to adopt the data services offered. If services continue to primarily serve industry, and particularly the vendors rather than the user, expensive new networks will be launched, but used by few.
.CALLOUT Nokia alone sold 128,000,000 handsets, generating Euro 21.8B in sales.
It can not be disputed that streaming services generally, and Mobile TV specifically have been the dandy of vendors for years. Attending Nokia developer events as early as 2002, one could watch Nokia keynote speakers demonstrate the live streaming of TV programs, and promoting it as the next big thing. At 3GSM, the industry’s main trade show, topics such as Push to Talk and Instant Messaging have received some attention, but Mobile TV has for years enjoyed unparallel exposure. In the high-tech industry, where Next Big Things enjoy a short shelf life, the on-going obsession with Mobile TV requires examination.
.TEASER Why do vendors love Mobile TV so much? For the full behind-the-scenes story, tap here.
.H1 Why do vendors love Mobile TV so much?
The reason for the vendor obsession with Mobile TV is clear: vendors will inherently promote services which favor network and handset upgrades, and thus vendor sales. Mobile TV has been the main weapon that vendors have hyped and exploited to get operators to keep upgrading their networks.
Here, too, the reason is clear: of all the rich-media services, streaming generally, and Mobile TV specifically, place the greatest demand on the radio network, the most precious network resource. By promoting Mobile TV, vendors are directly causing operators to upgrade or replace networks each time vendors produce a new radio technology.
Since crippling carriers with outrageous costs for 3G (third generation) networks and spectrum, vendors have introduced new network technologies at a pace fierce and furious. HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and DVBH (Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld) are the latest technologies hyped by vendors as crucial for the success of Mobile TV. MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service) and BCMCS (Broadcast and Multicast Services) are futuristic vendor technologies lurging in the shadows. All technologies mentioned above require new handset types and either new or upgraded networks.
The streaming of TV content is more demanding than other type of services for several reasons. As with PC-based streaming, viewing streamed content involves the simultaneous delivery and viewing of content. Content is not stored, so delivery and viewing occur at the same time. As a result, the radio link between the user and network must be sufficiently broad and consistent to enable the user to watch the content smoothly, without delays.
PC-based broadband Internet, which offers bandwidth far greater than can mobile networks, still delivers an inconsistent and poor streaming experience. Mobile networks offer far less bandwidth, and thus simply can not deliver acceptable Mobile TV to the masses. This fact, however, has not prevented the vendors from hyping each new technology as the potential solution. A vicious and costly circle.
.H1 The network problem
The race for Mobile TV started with the vendors arguing that the first generation of data networks could not offer the bandwidth required for the streaming of video and TV. The first data networks, such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) are called 2.5 generation networks.
However, alternative non-streaming versions of Mobile TV existed. Background download services, where TV episodes are automatically downloaded (say, overnight) and available on the phone for at-will viewing could have been promoted to prove the viability of Mobile TV. Vendors, however, totally ignored these services, and focused exclusively on bandwidth-hungry live streaming. With the PC/Internet world evolving to broadband and multimedia, the carriers, caught in a prisoner’s dilemma, bought into the vision, and spent countless billions on buying spectrum and building new advanced 3G networks.
After selling these advanced 3G networks, the vendors began claiming that actually, 3G lacked the bandwidth to offer acceptable Mobile TV services, and that further upgrades were required. 3G, they now argued, could only deliver 1 Mb/second. Most of this capacity was actually reserved for voice calls, which is, of course, the carrier’s main source of revenue.
A decent Mobile TV experience requires a data flow of at least 124-256 kb/second per user, depending on the type of video content. The bandwidth must be multiplied for each user in the cell. This all means that 3G could actually support one Mobile TV user per cell at best.
Additionally, delivering Mobile TV users at peak usage times, in congested areas, or on trains and subways (where coverage is patchy) are the most popular usage-scenarios. However, delivering Mobile TV in these scenarios is extremely difficult, if not impossible. As a result, carriers ended up launching Mobile TV services over 3G for publicity purposes only.
.H1 Do consumers really care?
To date, no one is sure whether people want to watch full-length television programs on small mobile screens. Nonetheless, vendors were quick to claim that network bandwidth problems were the reason users were keeping away, and began championing new radio-technologies. HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), a network technology aimed at increasing 3G transmission rates, is the current solution they offer. It requires a network upgrade and new handset type. Alternatively, Nokia is championing DVBH (Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld), which requires building entirely new non-cellular networks, not to mention buying new Nokia handsets.
Mobile TV is but the most recent network and device dependent data service hyped by vendors. Mobile Internet was the first. Leveraging the Internet hype, vendors recognized the huge sales potential if carriers could be persuaded to data-enable the network.
A clever and recurring strategy emerged: piggyback on widely-popular, non-mobile services, then simply add the prefix "mobile" to them. Internet became Mobile Internet. TV became Mobile TV. By leveraging popular services, vendors were able to persuade carriers that porting services was easy, and that the mass-market would rapidly adopt already popular services on mobile devices, with revenue to follow. Self-financed analyst reports, combined with operators caught in a prisoner’s dilemma made it an easy sell.
As with Mobile TV, however, the usability of Mobile Internet proved terrible. The pull-based, click and wait experience is probably the single main factor behind the failure of Mobile Internet; a failure, that is, for all but the vendors. In 2000, the year in which first major European operators launched Mobile Internet, Ericsson and Nokia’s network sales reached approximately $23.7 billion. In that year, Nokia alone sold 128,000,000 handsets, generating Euro 21.8B in sales.
The carriers, though closer to the user, have also contributed their share of self-serving, unpopular service concepts; the mobile portal being the most prominent. The portal, a user-nightmare, was neither created, nor has it evolved with the user in mind. Rather, during carrier consolidation and the creation of global carriers, portals were established in an effort to build brand recognition. Vodafone Live was, and remains a tool to strengthen the brand, poor user-experience notwithstanding.
After the failure of so many network and device dependent services, one would expect that the industry generally, and carriers specifically, might ask fundamental questions before investing billions on networks, frequencies, device subsidies and marketing campaigns.
However, given the carrier’s "prisoner’s dilemma", the tendency to believe the latest hype is strong. No one wants to ignore industry analysts or the media, and allow the competitor to move forward alone. However, at some point, should one not suspect the message from an interested messenger?
Putting aside vendor-sponsored research, users have yet to adopt Mobile TV. Furthermore, it is unclear whether a technology exists that can actually deliver streamed TV to the mass-market. The fact is, however, that Mobile TV and Mobile Internet could have been delivered years ago on existing networks and devices, in ways far more user-friendly. Background-download for the former, and on-device-portals for the latter, are two such solutions.
Unfortunately, while these approaches would have been user and network friendly, these solutions are vendor unfriendly. They do not require any upgrades, and thus face an uphill battle, so long as the industry marches to the vendor beat.
We, the users, are constantly holding our phones and pressing its buttons, looking for something to do with the device. Vendor network and device dependent services have dominated the scene to date, but failed to deliver. Client-based solutions have the potential to provide users with an immediate interactive and content experience. However, given the industry focus on network-based Mobile TV and portal services, it is unclear whether the user will receive them.
.BIO Monte Silver, also known as Mobile Monte, has pioneered the development and sale of several advanced mobile client/server data solutions, including the Web/Mobile integrated Instant Messaging solution deployed at Verizon Wireless and throughout the Americas. Currently he heads MobiPod, a mobile podcast service. Mobile Monte can be reached at mobilemonte@hotmail.com
