Reuters reports that, research group, Informa forecast 125 million people will be watching mobile TV by 2010. This excludes streaming/downloading video, by the way – we’re talking the traditional one-to-many model.
If they’re right, this is actually rather pitiful – it’s a little less than 6% of worldwide penetration of mobile phones. It means that any return on investment by market for a launch will be hard to achieve.
Informa’s stance is in marked contrast to ABI’s which I wrote about a few weeks ago, who were more bullish than the Minotaur.
But, what I don’t understand is how anyone can make a sensible judgment about this, without taking into account costs. If you ask Martin or Mary Mobile if they want TV on their phone, they’ll shrug and say “Sure, baby”. If you say, “Will you pay $20 a month in subscription and data charges?”, I don’t think they’ll be quite so sure and at today’s rates, it could well be more than this.
So maybe there’s a case for Informa being the bullish ones. With ABI completely out to lunch on planet Zob.
If you’re wondering about the bloke in the tarzan outfit, by the way, he’s a chap whose AOL handle is the Minotaur. Who said AOL members were all boring?
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