Mobile TV: fashion or deep trend?

Some are hopefull, some are hopeless. It is an evidence that both camps can found fuel to feed their expectations in recently released information. 6m users in Japan, or 500k customers in Italy after few months of service, can be seen as good news for the pros, and the hope that there would be 140m users worldwide in 2011, generating some €4.7bn in revenues. It was the main outputs of a recent study conducted by Screen Digest. The report added that mobile TV should become the most important revenue share for MNOs, ahead of games and music. For Pros, the small size of the screen does not matter. On the contrary, the Cons are used to TV set or PC screen comfort and found the phone screen too tiny and uncomfortable. In addition, too many un-interoperable systems are currently competing, and the hope of the OMA-BCAST standard by the Broadcast Mobile Convergence Forum is still far away. The Mobile-Pedestrian-Handheld technology, or MPHT, could be faster delivered to users than Mobile TV, as technological issues are far less important. Finally, the mobile TV market take off should be hampered by the lack of affordable related handsets.

Who will win? My understanding is it could take a little bit longer than expected. Taking off is always gradual and smooth, except when everybody is agreeing on the goals. Creating a new market is sometimes painful and long.