Mobile TV will have 514 million subscribers worldwide by 2011
From
fewer than 20 million global subscribers today, mobile TV services
will have some 514 million subscribers worldwide in 2011, according to a
recent ABI Research study, "Broadcast
and Unicast Mobile TV Services". Of that total, the research
indicates, 460 million will be subscribers to
broadcast services. Broadcast services will have 1.5 million
subscribers by the end of 2006. In the US market, most subscribers will be
enabled by the wireless carriers' broadcast network partners, including
MediaFLO (a subsidiary of Qualcomm), Aloha's Hiwire network, and Crown
Castle's Modeo service.
The subscription revenue will be worth several hundred billion dollars by 2011 from the paltry $50 million in 2005. Even more important, advertising revenue from broadcast mobile video will dwarf subscription revenue, according to ABI Research forecasts.
Mobile broadcasting—as
opposed to streaming "unicast" services—is expected to rapidly
become the model of choice for distribution of live television and movies
to mobile devices in the United States, and by the end of 2007
approximately 4 million subscribers will receive entertainment and
information on their wireless handsets via mobile broadcast technologies
such as DVB-H and MediaFLO.
The revenue generated from mobile video services around the world is set to skyrocket from $46.2 million in 2005 to $5.6 billion in 2009, a staggering 11,997% jump in 5 years, says Infonetics Research.
There will be over 50 million portable media players in use worldwide by 2008, says In-Stat
