A number of countries may be on the brink of deploying commercial mobile broadcasting services, however the advertising and subscription models necessary to make those services a profitable reality are still far from developed. But as Martin Farrimond, general manager – new platforms at Broadcast Australia, explains, some Asian countries, especially South Korea and Japan, already have a very strong mobile TV market. “As younger markets with keen technology adopters, Asian countries like Japan and South Korea have a strong take up potential for mobile TV services using broadcast technology. Eventually, mobile TV will be a strong proposition in many markets in Asia,” said Farrimond. Farrimond revealed that Broadcast Australia’s aim of interest right now is in the markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. During 2007 and 2008, Broadcast Australia ran a DVB-H trial through Singapore Digital, and is also involved with trialing, planning and implementing other mobile TV services in Sydney and Malaysia. Trial participants have included network licensees and operators; infrastructure providers; other equipment vendors; mobile network operators; and content providers. The company’s experience spans many technologies, including DVB-H and MediaFLO, as well as various digital access and protection solutions. Broadcast Australia’s user trial approach in Australia involved 400 users, and included both mobile network operator and content partners like Telstra, Foxtel and others. According to Broadcast Australia, a wide range of users were recruited. These involved existing pre- and post-pay mobile users with a broad age range (18 – 60) and wide income range. Both subscription and non-subscription TV customers with a range of existing TV viewing habits were involved. Questionnaires were conducted before, during, and on conclusion of the trial. In Asia Pacific, mobile applications and interactive content has transformed the way in which people live, work and play, says Fevzi Çakmak, director of business development, Irdeto. “Consumers can now receive live TV content through downloading, streaming or broadcast mobile TV. For broadcast mobile TV, multiple standards are available today, including DVB-H, DMB, CMMB and MediaFLO, to name a few. For example, DVB-H has been tested by many operators around the world. Commercial operations of broadcast mobile TV solutions were launched as early as 2005, in countries such as Korea, Japan. These services are also now available in countries as Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, US as well as China,” Cakmak added. Cakmak notes that content is a major driver for the adoption of new mass market services such as mobile TV and would be an essential component of success. As such, a broad variety of content should be offered for consumption – from simple re-transmission of existing television programming and well-known TV brands to premium content and tailored-made as well as user-generated content. “Having said that, there’s no one-size fits all strategy. One has to understand the local market dynamics and how people consume media on their mobile phones and how mobile TV will fit in consumers’ everyday lives. Prior to launching mobile TV, it is important to experiment with different forms of content and formats, such as free to all, premium content, live shows, sports, news, to name a few,” affirms Cakmak. Since 2005, Irdeto has been active in mobile TV when it launched the world’s first commercial mobile TV solution together with its partner TU-Media in South Korea. This mobile pay-TV service is delivered using a satellite-based DMB network (S-DMB). To date, Irdeto supports over 1.85 million S-DMB subscribers with an average viewing time of almost 1 hour per subscriber per day. TU Media offers premium content such as movies, education, sports and adult programming through 22 video channels and 15 audio channels to its customers. The competing T-DMB offering in South Korea is based on re-transmissions of the local terrestrial broadcast. In all the trials with Irdeto’s involvement, Irdeto has seen a huge interest from participants to the trial for a mobile TV service offering. “Everyone was impressed by the quality and they were willing to pay a monthly fee to get access to the services. Having seen what happened in the SMS text messaging industry, we believe that ultimately all phones will have broadcast mobile TV capability given time,” said Cakmak. While SMS revenues are contributing significantly to an operator’s bottom line and content would be key, next up would be mobile internet traffic, mobile TV, followed by advertising revenues and data capture. “Mobile internet traffic is finally growing and starting to contribute to the bottom line as well. Mobile operators are interested in mobile TV because this would allow them to reduce churn and attract new customers with their mobile TV service offerings for which they can boost their ARPU with an average of US$5-15 a month, based on the service offerings. Content on mobile TV has to be relevant and fresh for consumers to consume on the go. Advertising in mobile TV is going to become relevant as soon as we see an increase in the mobile TV subscriber base. With data capturing, business intelligence is even going to be more important for targeted advertising purposes. To sum it up, all the different revenue models will have varying degrees of importance,” says Cakmak. At ESPN STAR Sports, senior vice president, ad sales Charles Less, outlines ESS’s on-air, digital, mobile and on-ground offerings. “We are able to offer clients multi-platform opportunities to target viewers across a wide demographic. Besides watching our programmes on-air, we have successfully extended our viewer engagement online, with new media applications that have a high level of interactivity, said Less. ESS also offers a host of games ranging from fantasy gaming and match predictors for BPL, cricket and F1. “These applications have become so successful that they are advertising entities in their own right with concepts like NFC Manager, a BPL fantasy league, Tiger Challenge, a BPL match predictions game that has also expanded to the mobile platform; and Caltex Supa Strikas for the FA Cup,” said Less. “This season, some of these games have enjoyed good take-up and growth. NFC Manager saw a significant 43 percent increase in the number of registrants and a 68.6 percent increment in the number of teams from the previous season. In addition, we also extended it to include a Friendster application and on the mobile platform as well,” he added. Besides advertising on two on-air channels, on the mobile platform, ESS’ mobileESPN delivers mobile content for specific audiences. “In India, we are the leading sports media service provider for text alert services, which covers across multiple sports including cricket, Barclays Premier League (Delayed live), Formula 1, Tennis and any other major sporting event. We are the content provider to major telecommunications companies with over 50 percent market share,” said Less. “We also have a wapsite (mobile website) www.mobilespn.in, the only multi-sports destination on the mobile. It is also the sports home page for telcos such as like Airtel, Idea and Aircel. Currently, the website generates close to nine million visits daily (Peak Traffic during season) and has emerged as one of the top wapsites in terms of PV’s from India. We have not started serving ads on our site but we do plan to approach advertisers in the next three months for serving ads,” he added. Less says that ESS has also moved into the SMS2.0 space by providing mobileESPN content on Affle. “We have run some exclusive ad campaigns with advertisers and will look at expanding that in the coming year,” he added. In Malaysia, ESS has launched a Barclays Premier League SMS News Alert Service, a direct-to-consumer service for mobile users to subscribe and receive news alerts and ‘live’ score of the top BPL clubs of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. Sony Pictures Television (SPT), meanwhile, distributes a range of digital content for various levels of mobile technology and other new media platforms, offering personalization products and mobile games based on SPT’s blockbuster properties, full length movies and TV shows on mobile VOD as well as original multiplatform content. Examples include the best-selling Spider-Man and God of War mobile games, movies and TV shows on SKT’s mobile VOD platform in South Korea and the original multiplatform series Afterworld. According to Rosemary Tan, executive director, mobile entertainment, Asia at Sony Pictures Television, there are a lot of projections regarding the mobile market and they all point to a few key trends. “One, a key growth market for mobile is smart phones. Two, video content is a driver for smart phone adoption. Three, that consumers are looking for content across platform and not just for mobile. This is why we are focusing on the creation of digital video content not just for mobile, but for multiple platforms,” says Tan. Tan notes that technology and bandwidth will continue to develop rapidly. “I suspect the revenue stream for mobile TV will mirror pay TV in that it will be a combination of subscription and ad revenue as the platform reaches a critical mass,” she added. And over at AETN All Asia Networks (AAAN), the focus to date has been primarily on making the entire channels available on mobile, either on DVB-H services, or 3G/GPRS services. AAAN currently have services available in Malaysia and the Philippines, with other deals launching in other markets over the coming months. Louis Boswell, general manager of AETN All Asia Networks maintains it is the early days for the development of this business so it is too soon to gauge the levels of success. Boswell does, however, highlight the current importance of brand presence followed by subscription revenue with regards to ‘content to mobile values’. “We hope over time revenue will become the predominant driver. Simply, the service need to become more popular, more people need to subscribe, more people need to have data plans and use them, and services need to be marketed more,” he said. From an operator’s perspective, StarHub TV on Mobile currently offer eight ‘live’ channels including Barclays Premier League (BPL), Goal TV1 and Goal TV2, three news channels (CNN, CNBC and CNA) and two entertainment channels (Animax and CTI). StarHub continues to supplement their line-up with new content, and will introduce new content and channels this year. In addition, StarHub also offer clips and downloads across several genre, such as, kids (Disney), sports (ESPN), Asian (E-City & VV Drama) and Ethnic (Sensasi). “Mobile TV is still in its early stages. These days we do see more and more handsets in the market with form factors for video-streaming, such as high speed internet connectivity, larger screen, and high-quality screen resolution that ensure good quality ‘live’ TV viewing. We believe these have improved the overall customer experience on mobile TV viewing compared to a few years back,” says Chan Kin Hung, head of personal solutions and advanced multimedia services at StarHub. While Chan thinks it is too soon to reach any firm conclusion on mobile TV since it is still in its early stages, he cited the important factors coming about – such as high-speed mobile internet connectivity, larger screen and high-quality screen resolution in handsets – that have helped improve the overall customer experience on mobile TV viewing compared to a few years back. Chan notes that mobile TV is a new media and as such, it is important for the operator to explore the different business models. “At StarHub, we believe our competitive advantage lies in our ability to leverage on content expertise and entrenched associations in the cable TV area and optimise it for our mobile customers. This experience has helped us to better understand our customers’ requirements and has enabled us to work with partners to meet those requirements.” And according to Chan, from StarHub’s experience in pay TV, some basic principles – such as price predictability and simple pricing – are applicable to mobile TV. “Our customers can get our eight-channel mobile TV offering for only $1 a day. Those who are on StarHub TV with a Sports Tier subscription plan can stream all channels for free.”