CCID Consulting in its latest report identified four key aspects that must be addressed to propel the development of mobile TV in China: national standards, lack of a solid profit model, low-quality user experience and terminal bottlenecks.
The first step requires national standards to unify, said CCID. The State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT) unilaterally promulgated industrial standards for mobile multimedia broadcasting in October 2006, however, carriers have not been influenced by the standards. Four technical standards, CDMB from China Association for Standardization, TMMB from NuFront, DMB-TH from Tsinghua University and CMMB from SARFT are competing to become the national standard. CCID believes that the earlier confirmation of the national standard for mobile TV will help define the position of domestic mobile TV participants in the industrial chain and help chipmakers in selecting which standard to adhere to.
At present, the domestic industry lacks a long-term business profit model, said CCID. Carriers have established a cooperative operation pattern with value-added service providers relying on existing channels of charging. In this model, users pay information fees and high data flow fees. Monthly flow set is provided, but the charge is still higher for ordinary users. Meanwhile, the data flow of mobile TV will occupy larger communication bandwidth, which will certainly influence the general communication of carriers. It is an era of media. Mobile TV has no advantage in advertising value in comparison with traditional media. Before forming a large user base, it is hard for advertising revenue to support the operation of mobile TV by itself, added CCID.
CCID also pointed out that user experience of China viewers must improve. Currently, the content from mobile TV and traditional TV is homogenized, and terminal displays are small with low resolution. Inserting advertisements to balance income of carriers and broadcasting departments tends to lower user enjoyment to some extent, said CCID.
The bottleneck from terminals stifles popularity, said CCID. Although there is an increase of terminals for mobile TV, the terminal price remains very high. The average price of a new mobile phone is above $25.99. Moreover, majority of the current terminals adopt Li-ion batteries with a capacity for approximately two hours business of mobile TV, which means that mobile TV use will influence the user's normal calling habits.